


In The Wings

by Nonymos



Series: The Marvel Fractions [2]
Category: Hawkeye (Comics), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: ANGST I SAY, Angst, Asexuality?, Author is Evil, BAMF Natasha, Bruce Banner Needs a Hug, Bruce Feels, Clint Feels, Clint Needs a Hug, Clint is so goddamn nice, Demisexuality?, Depression?, Fraction's Hawkeye, Guilt, Hawkguy, Hulk Feels, Hulkeye - Freeform, In the Details sequel, Insecure Clint, Loneliness, M/M, Natasha is so goddamn tough, Team Building, well it's complicated, yeah somehow, you know what just screw the labels and read the story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-07
Updated: 2014-04-24
Packaged: 2018-01-07 21:40:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 22
Words: 65,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1124678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nonymos/pseuds/Nonymos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In only a few months, Clint Barton has single-handedly managed to do what Loki, Doom, and the Sentry failed to achieve: the world is ending. </p><p>The superheroes' world, anyway. Clint has kind of lost track of who wants to kill him at that point. As SHIELD and the WSC enter an unspoken cold war, some might consider this utter disaster as an opportunity to start anew. War is brewing on stage, but Clint stays in the wings, because he's looking for someone. Desperately so.</p><p>But with so many people on his tail, he just might be found first.</p><p> </p><p>Sequel of <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/956115">In The Details</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

_“Ïa ichtchou Ust-Ordynski,”_ he murmured through chapped lips.

 

He was puffing huge clouds of steam with each breath out, so huge it seemed they couldn’t be possibly coming out of his scrawny self. He could not distinguish the white sky from the white road; the snowflakes twirled all around him, and he couldn't tell anymore if they were falling down or going back up into the heavens.

 _“Ïa ichtchou Ust-Ordynski,”_ he whispered, exhaling the words into the frozen air.

He stamped his boots on the frozen road to get the snow off, but he only managed to collect more snow, sticky snow which made each step a bit heavier. His bag was heavy on his shoulder; he was wearing two sweaters, a leather jacket and a down coat, but he was still cold. His hands felt numb even though they hadn't left his pockets in hours.

  _“Ïa ichtchou Ust-Ordynski,”_ he said, teeth chattering. The wind took his words and carried them away into the immensity of the steppes. The road was long and flat with nothing catching his gaze other than the shadow of a rock, or the outline of a tree against the great white nothingness.

Then something rippled inside him, a shudder which had nothing to do with the cold.

He stilled and looked around him.

Everything was white and silent. He pushed his hands even deeper in his pockets, looking for a bit of warmth which wasn't there; he was so thin, and his layers and layers of coats so thick, that he didn't find his own body for a second, and he thought that he was gone, that he'd been swallowed by his own clothes without even noticing it.

A dark shape appeared in the distance, behind the thick veil of heavy snow, joggling from side to side like the shadow of some heavy-gaited mammoth. For a surreal second, the illusion lived on; then the sputtering of an old engine ripped through the cold veil of silence, and the imprecise curves of the beast morphed into the square lines of a tractor making its painful way through the thick snow.

The traveler watched it come towards him inch by inch, printing fresh tracks on the road. He started walking towards it, blinking to chase the snowflakes away. The tractor stilled with a splutter of thick black smoke which was swallowed at once by the all-encompassing whiteness. Then the passenger door clicked open; and he hurried to climb inside, because this was not weather to stand hesitating in.

He slammed the door behind him, wriggled off his backpack and tucked it on his lap as he sat down. The inside was cramped and almost as cold as the outside, but at the very least, there was no wind. The driver was a young man with thick black hair and suspicious eyes.

The traveler unfroze his blocked jaw and uttered, “Ïa—ïa icht... ichtchou Ust-Ord... Ust-Ord...”

“Ust-Ordynski?”

“Da.”

“That is where I go,” the young man said. He shrugged at his passenger's puzzled look and said, “You got very thick accent. English or maybe German. But you no German.”

“...No.”

“But you not from here,” the young man said.

The traveler extracted a frozen hand from his right pocket and reached out to his savior. “Thank you. I think I underestimated your Siberian spring.”

“Not spring yet,” the young man answered, before shaking his hand and adding. “Piotr Rasputin.”

“Bruce,” said Bruce. “Bruce... Roberts.”

He stuffed his hand back inside his down jacket. “Are we very far from town?”

Piotr restarted the tractor which started making its painful way forward once again. “No, but snow is thick.”

They stayed silent for a long time. The air between them was slowly warming up now that there were two of them crammed inside the small space; it smelled of gasoline and ice. Bruce had wrapped his arms around his bag, which he firmly kept in his lap.

“Ust-Ordynski,” Rasputin announced almost an hour later.

It had stopped snowing. He led the tractor to a small square between rows of grey houses. Bruce opened the door and started shifting over on his seat.

“Well,” he said, just before climbing out, “thanks for the ride.”

He was about to let himself slide down to the ground when he heard, “Wait.”

He froze, then slowly turned round.

Piotr Rasputin was staring at him with shrewd dark eyes.

“Are you a mutant?” he asked.

Bruce stared back for a long, still moment.   

“No,” he said softly. “I'm not a mutant.”

“I was wondering,” Rasputin grumbled. “Alone in the snow like this... But it's no use running. You know that, yes? Nowhere to hide. Superheroes are gone. Scattered. Finished. You know Captain America is dead?”

Bruce clutched at his bag until his knuckles turned white.

“I’m not a mutant,” he repeated very softly.

Rasputin gave him another long, pensive look. Bruce inched away again; then, when he saw that the young man stayed silent, he quickly slipped off the seat and landed in the thick snow which crunched under his boots. He looked up, but Rasputin had already slammed the passenger door shut; the tractor coughed out a cloud of black smoke and went away.

Bruce shrugged on his heavy bag and walked away in the snowed-covered street. The industrial town looked completely deserted. Not a soul to be seen under the grey and white skies; almost all blinds were shut, but slow ribbons of smoke stretched from the chimneys up above the rooftops. Bruce reached a small porch and tucked himself there before digging a crumpled map out of his pocket.

He frowned at it for a good ten minutes, then clumsily folded it again and stuffed it back inside his jacket.

He stayed where he was for another five minutes, exhaling shallow puffs of steam. Then he shuddered and wrung himself out from his mediocre shelter to start walking again, heading north.

 

*

 

The road turned into a track, the track turned into a path, and after a few more miles, the path itself turned into nothing more than a vague hollow in the thick layer of snow. There was a frozen stream at Bruce's right hand, and he followed it up, wary of hidden holes and snowdrifts which suddenly opened under his feet to swallow him knee-deep like frozen hungry mouths. He stopped twice to check his map, but gave up after the first hour and kept walking along the small river burrowed between the snowy knolls. Ust-Ordynski was long gone from sight behind the crest of a frosted hill. Bruce kept going higher and higher, yet every time he turned to look behind him, there was only snow and ice, as though he was alone in the whole of Siberia.

Night was falling when he got to the small hunting shack he was looking for, in the middle of a flat hilltop. Bruce crossed the thick virgin snow with difficulty; he had to unfreeze the handle to pry it loose. He pulled the door open with painful, jerky tugs, squeezed inside through the narrow crack, and scraped the door back shut behind him.

The inside was small and cold, with colorless light washing in as the sun set behind the clouds. Walking to the window, Bruce looked outside for a minute. It had started snowing again, and everything was blurring in a grey mist which kept growing duskier. Bruce turned away and dropped his heavy bag on the wooden floor. He got out a strange blobby package filled with an orange goo and wrung it between his hands until it started glowing and warming up. He dropped it in the fireplace just before it could grow hot enough to burn his hands, then went to the window again and shut the thick wooden blinds. Then he went back to the fireplace and sat cross-legged in front of it.

He stayed like this for a minute, looking into the orange goo with weary eyes. He rubbed his forehead with the back of his hand, as though fighting a headache, then just kept rubbing in a mechanical, meaningless way, as though he simply could not stop the motion he'd started.

Eventually, a more violent shudder made him realize he was trembling. He got up and dragged an old beaten-up mattress next to his non-fire; he got out a tin foil cover out of his backpack, then quickly shed all his clothes down to his underwear—the down jacket, the leather jacket, the first sweater, the second sweater, the t-shirt, the pants, the other pair of pants—and sat on the mattress under the emergency blanket; he twisted awkwardly to grab the pile of his clothes and drag it over his skinny body, then curled up under it, closed his eyes, and waited till he stopped shivering.

He fell asleep before that.

 

*

 

The howl of the wind woke him up. He blinked, then shyly shimmied out from under his pile of clothes and was very relieved to realize that the room was not freezing cold anymore. The chemical heater had done its job; it was still glowing strong in the fireplace. Bruce hoped he had enough of them, and enough food, to last three months as intended. It was the middle of April; if he managed to hide till July, the gentler climate would allow him to disappear further into the steppes. Ust-Ordynski was not exactly a tourist town. He could build an actual cabin in the deep forest. Next to a little lake, if he found one.

He was staring into his non-fire again. It was not nearly as fascinating as actual flames; yet after a moment, his eyes started growing glassy, hazy, unfocused—then outright rolled back in his head as his spine suddenly stiffened.

“...Ah,” he mouthed.

There was nothing for a long time; just the wails and lows of the wind outside.

“No,” Bruce said in a veiled voice, like a dreamer tossing and turning in his sleep. “Not anymore. Siberia now.”

He clenched his jaw and arched even more. “No,” he panted, fists clenching. “Not _possible._ No. Can't. Stop. _Stop.”_

The tendons in his neck stuck out and his teeth ground together. Big tears welled up in his blank eyes and rolled down his unmoving face.

“Stop,” he murmured hoarsely. “I know. But we can't. Please. Listen to me.”

His speech was growing more halting and hurried.

“It's been,” he said. “Four months. Now it’s safe. It’s—safe.”

Tears were overflowing his face, rolling down without any exterior sign of emotion, as though by mistake.

“Safe,” he said. “You too. Both alone. Safe.”

He exhaled deeply and loosened his fists.

“No,” he murmured. “No cures anymore. I promise.” He swallowed. “I _swear.”_

The tension in his body snapped and all of a sudden he was curling up on himself, with deep, shaking sobs which sounded as though they were forced out of him, as though he was actually crying for something greater than him. “No c-cures anym-more,” he gasped. “We're alone. It's ov-ver.”

He hunched in on himself even more and stammered through his sobs, “It-t's all o-over.”

 

*

 

Bruce did almost nothing but sleep through the blizzard of the first days. Shut down in his small blind shack, he huddled up near the chemical fire in a shallow, agitated slumber. Every time he woke up, he ate a little, then just stared into space until he fell asleep again.

On the fourth day, he squirmed out from under his pile of clothes and clumsily dressed himself. He'd only gotten out once a day to relieve himself until then, and he hadn't really taken the time to take in his surroundings. When he opened the door, the sky was still clouded over, but the clouds were shredding in places to offer glimpses of a distant blue. Everything around the shack was mostly white with a few hints of black here and there.

He unfolded his more and more crumpled map. There was a small forest further west.

He walked all the way there, then climbed up a snowy hill and found a sunny spot near the trees. He took a deep breath, then starting shedding his clothes once again. He folded them carefully and stuck them under a big rock before sticking a branch next to it. Without his clothes, he was as thin and bony as the branch itself.

“A-alright,” he muttered, wrapping his arms around himself, shaking like a rattle. “J-just...”

He took a deep breath, then his eyes turned green and he—

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

—woke up lying face-down in the snow.

 

He painfully propped himself up; his clothes were there, frozen under their rock, just a few feet away. All around him, the snow was rumpled as though it had been trampled by a horde of elephants. The sun was very low on the horizon behind the thick layer of clouds.

“J-J-J-Jesus,” he stammered, crouching up. “B-B-Banner, if t-t-t-there was a N-N-Nobel p-prize f-for s-s-s- _stupidity...”_

His bare skin was almost entirely blue with cold. He started picking up his clothes, incessantly muttering to himself despite his chattering teeth. He wrapped himself in the down jacket first, then put on the rest of his clothes underneath this relative shelter. His fingers were trembling so much it took him almost fifteen minutes to lace his boots. Still shaking like mad, he got up and stumbled down the hill and into the woods.

The shack was still standing up, and on this side of the woods, the snow was unsullied as far as his eyes could see. His shoulders relaxed minutely, but he only shuddered all the more and wobbled across the last yards to get to his miserable shelter. When he pushed the door open, the warmth of the little cabin stung and burned his frozen cheeks; and when he winced, tears welled up in his eyes.

He stayed there for a second, wavering. Then he stepped inside and closed the door to shut this white world out, before staggering through the small room to sit down heavily on the old mattress. He knew he had to undress himself again and dry his clothes, but he couldn't. His fingers and toes and hands and feet were still completely numb. He was going to freeze to death but he could not bring himself to care.

Tears rolled down his cheeks again and made him scowl in pain. He wiped them away wearily and stared at the chemical heater, but they kept welling up in his eyes. He kept staring, ignoring them. Then a small crease formed between his eyebrows.

At first, he thought he was seeing double. But after wiping his eyes once more, he blinked at the fireplace and there they were. Not one glowing bag; but _two._ The first one had died out, crumpled and deflated under the second one like an old jellyfish.

 

Bruce turned to the other end of the room and peered at it behind his veil of tears. It was plunged in deep, cold shadows, as though opening on a much darker, much wider space.

Something shifted in the obscurity and said,

 

“Hello.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So glad you're back for the sequel, readers! Praise my wonderful beta laurie_ky, and drop a comment. ^^ Ooh, I hope you'll like this.


	2. Assemble

 

 

 

 

 

God, Clint hated Russia.

 

Seriously, it was freaking _May_ and he almost had to dig his way up the streets because of all the _snow_. What was wrong with this goddamn latitude? The natives looked like they simply did not care, but Clint's poor American ass was freezing out here, no matter how thick his coat or how fast he walked.

At least, it allowed him to keep a scarf over his face and a ridiculous hat firmly stuck on his head. It was preferable now that everything had gone to complete hell.

It had all looked still rather manageable a little more than thirty days ago. Cap was still talking away on endless TV shows; Iron Man was being as reclusive as possible so as to not to give the public any more examples of rash and destructive behavior; and all other superheroes were laying really low while SHIELD tried to minimize the damage caused by Clint Francis Barton vs. the WSC.

Clint's own disappearance hadn't caused any stirring, except for a few acrid commentaries on the news as to whether he'd run or been killed. He hadn’t been famous enough before the whole Sentry incident to be the media's darling now, and no one appeared to actually worry about him save for a few crazy conspiracy theorists. Which also meant no one was actively out for his blood, despite the mess he'd caused.

But that was last month.

He didn't know how many people wanted to kill him _now,_ but it was safer not to try to find out. The proverbial dam had broken, of course, on the day of Steve Rogers' death. Everything else had broken that day.

Last month—he was about to leave Germany. He was sitting in a great, classy bar in the Berlin airport—an exposed place he wouldn't dream of picking now. He had a steaming styrofoam cup of coffee in front of him and he was watching a giant screen blink on, because that night was a match night and the German team was playing; so the patrons were setting up their damn screen. The game would only start in half an hour. For now it was the international news. Steve Rogers, again. He was climbing up the steps of a courthouse and descending neck-deep into legal trouble. Clint had sighed, raised his cup at the image, and sipped a bit of coffee.

There—in that split second— he heard the patrons' collective shout; he startled and burned himself so badly he could still feel it on his tongue a week later.

When he looked up at the screen again...

 

“ _Mein Gott,”_ the newscaster was saying hysterically.

“ _Mein Gott. Mein Gott.”_

And Steve's blood trickling down on the stairs. His blue eyes were still open. People were running around in panic.

“ _Mein Gott,”_ again and again and again, like a broken record.

The image had flickered and died.

 

Clint had thrown up in the toilets before taking his plane to Sweden.

 

Rumor had it Steve had died on the spot, and the footage seemed to say so; but that was too ludicrous for even Clint to believe. Captain America wasn’t going to die from a single well-placed bullet. And his body had been carried away so fast. There had been no official funeral. Just... increasing confusion, and anger, and fear, and it just made no _sense._

No, this made no sense at all. This was too fishy, too unclear and too confused not to be an op. Besides, two weeks later, a brief, blurry footage had overflowed the Internet, featuring a tall man in civilian clothes who _might_ have been Steve Rogers, fighting against another guy who apparently had a mechanical arm. Clint doubted those sources, too, but he had to believe in something; and that something had to be that Steve Rogers, his mentor and life-long model, was still alive—otherwise he couldn't go on anymore.

No, he couldn't go on.

All his fault. Cap gone. Iron Man refusing to make any comments and hiding away in his Malibu mansion. All other superheroes equally unreachable. The Avengers Mansion in Brooklyn—trashed, a few weeks ago. Just like Xavier’s school, dismantled and burned to the ground. The mutants hunted everywhere. Clint just read the headlines and threw the newspapers away; after a while, he stopped reading the newspapers altogether. But still, he knew everything was crumbling down.

And Kate wasn't answering her phone anymore.

 

Clint didn't blame her. He wouldn't have answered himself, either. He only hoped nothing bad had happened to her. The Young Avengers were fairly liked before this whole mess, but now, who the fuck could know for sure?

Her last words, two weeks ago, had been to direct Clint towards Siberia—some place which sounded like Ustor-Kinky or something. The train would be leaving in half an hour. So that was where he was going, because he had to keep moving and there was nowhere for him to stay anyway.

Clint felt like he was running away from the orphanage all over again, except this time, he didn't even have his brother by his side. But as long as he stayed on the move, he could escape his thoughts, escape the possibility that Steve Rogers might actually be dead, and escape the irreparable damage he'd caused.

By trying to do the right thing.

 

_Dummy._

 

He often wondered if Bruce felt that way, too. If this was why he'd run all that time.

But no, of course not. Bruce was infinitely braver and stronger than Clint would ever be. He only ran away to protect people. And he'd stopped; he'd tried and tried to stand his ground and fight, until Clint ruined it all for him—just like he'd ruined it all for everyone. Tony. Logan. Peter. Steve...

Clint took a deep breath and blocked it, trying to calm his rising turmoil, but it deflated by itself anyway. Everything deflated and died inside him these days. Truth was—truth was, he was getting low.

Way too low.

Because the more he looked, the more he felt like Bruce couldn't possibly want anything to do with him anymore. After he'd first left, Clint had thrown himself into a mad race which had gotten him nowhere—nowhere being, in this case, Moscow; all in all, Clint had lived through seven months of solid winter, from October till May, as though _winter_ was what he'd chased from Brooklyn all the way across Europe. Steve Rogers might be dead. There was no doubt about the rest of the catastrophes anyway. No doubt about the mutant hunts; no doubt about the raging trials which most superheroes had fled from. No doubt about the civil war brewing all over the globe.

And Clint kept traveling, but he couldn't believe anymore that Bruce wanted to be found. He couldn't keep telling himself that anyone would welcome him. He couldn't keep pretending to hope for things to start looking up. So why did he keep looking?

The answer was as simple as despair. 

Despite Steve's blood trickling down the marble steps, despite the trashed Mansion and his fourteen missed calls to Katie, all Clint saw when he closed his eyes was— _Bruce._

Bruce. Bruce.

He missed him so much he felt like he kept gasping for air. He missed him so much he woke up scrambling for him every goddamn morning, even though it had been five goddamn _months_ now. He missed him so much he couldn't think of anything else than the pulsing pain in his chest. It wasn't dulling; time didn't affect it; it was, as a matter of fact, the _only_ thing which wasn't crumbling away in Clint's world. As though something had gotten stuck in there somewhere.

And he kept telling himself it couldn't be normal. Surely, people were not _supposed_ to feel like this. How was this natural? How was love in any way healthy when it weighed like this on Clint's chest, cold and metallic as though he'd had an ARC reactor of his own?

And maybe this wasn't so stupid a comparison, because Clint didn’t see how else he was meant to explain the fact that he kept getting up every day, kept walking and kept searching. He was driven only by this sharp, thrumming energy which had nothing to do with a malevolent Asgardian this time. Truth was he would have much rather stayed in bed, would have curled up and stayed in bed forever. But it hurt with each breath in, and it hurt more with each breath out. So at some point, Clint just had to get up and leave and stay on the move, because if he pretended he was doing something, he managed to breathe again.

Just barely.

No, this wasn't how he was supposed to feel. After everything he'd lived through, all the things that had happened to him, for pain to be such a _novelty_ was simply fucking unfair. The sharpness of it was not _normal._ They'd spent only two weeks actually together. Bruce had probably moved on. Found a quiet place to settle in. Watched the news of the world in increasing consternation. Tried to help people as he always did. Forgotten about his winter in Brooklyn. Bruce's wounds healed; this was how he functioned.

But Clint? Clint was stuck inside an empty room on a dark Christmas morning.

So he kept moving. Kept telling himself he had to try. He owed it to Bruce and to all the people of whom he'd ruined the lives. So he bowed his head against the wind, and kept walking towards the Yaroslavski Train Station, dragging his feet in the snow.

He crossed two streets before he had to stop at a last red light. The atmosphere was darkening already in a too early dusk; Clint stood with a bunch of Russians on the side of the road and waited for the traffic light to turn green.

“So, that's it,” someone said next to him. “You're taking the Transsiberian.”

 

Clint stood there transfixed in the snow, clenching at the strap of his bag.

 

Eventually, he swallowed and made an effort to start breathing again.

“Well,” he said. “Someone told me I should ride it at least once.”

He turned round.

“You do realize it's not a train,” Natasha Romanov said. “It's the name of the railway line.”

Her perfect red lips matched the red of her hair curling under her silver fur hat. She smiled, and the light turned green; everyone around them crossed the street, and they remained alone on the sidewalk.

Natasha's boots were firmly stuck in the snow, as though she'd waited for him right here, for days on end. She looked absolutely stunning, like a delicate Russian doll. Like an apparition. Clint had wondered for so long what had happened to her—what had happened to all of them—and there she was. Just like that.

Clint was suddenly keenly aware that he hadn't shaved or showered in four days.

Now that he'd swallowed back his astonishment, to see her there made his guilt flare and burn inside him all the more. He wondered if she knew the truth about Cap; if she'd been there during the trashing of the Avengers Mansion; if she had news about anyone else, about Katie or Jessica, or even Logan, or Peter. Clint hadn't heard of Peter since Christmas, either.

He didn't dare to ask.

“Well, I still wouldn't want to miss it,” he said. “The train, I mean.”

“And where are you going?” she asked calmly.

The traffic light was red again. Her glinting eyes looked all the more piercing and deadly with that crimson sparkle.

Clint hesitated, then asked, “...You're not here to kill me, are you?”

She smirked a little. “Seriously, Clint?”

“No, no, of course not,” Clint muttered, although he hadn't been joking, not really. “You're just here on vacation. Right? Going back home for spring.”

Russia was not her home and they both knew it. He sighed, then brushed a few snowflakes off his arm. His bag was weighing on his shoulders, and man, he was tired. So tired.

“So why are you here?” he asked at last.

Her smirk hadn't lasted; she kept staring at him with shrewd, severe eyes. “I came here with a job,” she said. “For you.”

Clint blinked, then pointed out cautiously, “You don't sound so sure about it.”

“Well not anymore,” she said briskly. “Clint...” She shook her head with pursed lips.

He bowed his head like a scolded child. Yeah, he knew.

“Is this really how you're dealing with it all?” she said. “By letting yourself go like this? By running away from the trouble you caused?”

Clint wanted to tell her he wasn't running away—even though it would have been a very sensible thing to do considering his current life expectancy, he wasn’t running away. He was running _towards._ As a matter of fact, his goal was the only thing that kept him going.

But that was irrelevant, wasn't it? Because everything else she'd said was true. Clint himself hated how despondent and apathetic he'd grown. He knew people were out for his blood, and yet his only weapon was buried in the depths of his bag. As though he couldn't bring himself to care anymore. Too empty to care.

He'd really fucked up. He knew he shouldn't stay alone any longer; and he shouldn't let go of the only friend he'd found in five months. But he also knew that if he left with her right now, if he missed that train, he could never forgive himself. That icy blade in his chest would start twisting and tearing and he wouldn't be able to breathe at all anymore.

“Nat,” he tried to say. “You don't understand. I... I really have to take this train, alright?”

“Why?”

The traffic lights clicked green. The small crowd which had formed around them flowed across the street again.

“You want to keep going like this?” she said brusquely. “Fine. I came here to recruit an Avenger. Not a hobo who won't even stand up for himself.”

“I'm not an Avenger,” Clint said.

She looked down on him with cold eyes. “Not right now, you're not.”

“No, you don't get—I can't come with you,” he tried again. “I want to, but I can't. It's...”

There was no way to tell her. It sounded ridiculous even to his own ears. She simply wouldn't believe it. He shook his head and muttered, “What do you even need me _for_ anyway?”

“Well, first of all, I'm trying to save your life,” she said dryly.

He blinked at her and said nothing.

“Do you have any idea how many people want to kill you?” she went on. “I thought you'd be glad to see me.”

“I'm glad,” Clint said belatedly.

And he guessed he was; he just couldn't feel it at the moment. “Thanks. Tash, really. But I—it's not... I mean, there's no team anymore. I screwed that up. Big time.”

“Yes, you did,” she said without smiling. “And you thought it would be enough to bring us down? Didn't you learn to expect better of us?”

He stared at her long enough for the traffic lights to cast a red glow on her face again.

“What are you saying, Nat?” he asked slowly.

“We're reassembling the team,” she said. “Without SHIELD and without the WSC. Whether the world likes us or not, the day might come they'll need us again. We need to be ready.”

That... sounded almost too good to be true. Clint felt a painful longing inside him, matched with the awful knowledge that he could never accept her offer. Once again, he wondered if this was how Bruce felt, all the time.

He still heard himself asking, “Who's in?”

“Stark,” she enumerated. “Logan, Steve—”

 

Clint's heart almost stopped right there.

 

“Steve's alive?” he blurted. “Steve's _alive?”_

Her eyes softened just a little; she grabbed his arm and dragged him closer. People were starting to crowd around them again and she waited for the lights to turn green once more.

Once they were alone, she said quietly, “Yes, Clint.”

Clint exhaled in a big whoosh, then pressed his fist against his mouth and screwed his eyes shut so his tears wouldn’t well up. He could still feel the burn on his tongue from that day in Berlin.

“God,” he said through gritted teeth. “ _God.”_

“It's a long story and I won't tell you about it right now,” Natasha explained. “Not here.”

“I can—fuck, I can wait,” Clint said, letting his fist fall and exhaling deeply again. “Hell, I don't even want to know. Just this is enough.” He let out a hollow laugh; through his eyelids, he saw the light go red again, and he reopened them.

“Even if he'd died, it wouldn't have been your fault,” she said. “The Barton Act wasn't just you.”

Clint let out a small bitter laugh. “Yet somehow, they didn't call it the Rogers Act.”

He took a deep breath and exhaled through his nose, then reopened his eyes. “Alright,” he said. “Alright.”

“What,” she said. “You want to come after all?”

Clint stared at the snow at his feet, at all the tiny crystals of snow reflecting the crimson traffic lights. He thought about being part of a team again. Having a purpose again. He longed for it, so _bad._

But he shook his head.

“I—” he said.

He should have said _no_ outright, but he was too much of a weakling for it. “I don't know. Nat, I can't... Who else is there?”

“Jessica Drew,” she said. “The Young Avengers...”

God, she was torturing him. Clint laughed again, weakly. “And none of those guys want to kill me?”

“No,” she said blandly before going on, “Wolverine, too—the whole mutant school if he can reach them. Me, of course. Banner. Spider-Man, but that's if—”

 

 

Clint's bag crashed on the ground with a shocking noise of shattered glass.

 

 

She looked up, startled. The light turned green again. People walked around them, crossing the street, shuffling in the snow. Beer slowly trickled out of Clint's bag. He was petrified, staring straight at her without seeing anything.

“Clint?”

Clint couldn't breathe. Couldn’t move. He'd thought his heart had stopped when she told him about Steve, but it had been nothing compared to this.

He had to try three times and swallow thickly before he could utter feebly, “Sorry. I just... sorry.”

There was a rush in his ears and suddenly, everything was too loud around him. His heart was going to beat through his ribs. He could see the tiniest details of his surroundings.

“Sorry,” he said again.

He leaned down to pick up his bag under her surprised, frowning eyes. “The team,” he muttered as he got rid of the broken bottle of beer—“they're all… they’re all gathered already?”

Natasha was still staring at him in suspicion, but she said slowly, “...No. Clint, that's what I've been trying to tell you for fifteen minutes. We're assembling again. We're not already gathered. That's what assembling _means.”_

“But you know where everyone is?” he asked, and there was no way he sounded casual—“you know?”

“We haven't pin-pointed Xavier's clandestine school; Banner's off the grid, and we're still looking for Spider-Man,” she admitted. “But aside from that, the real...”

Her voice faded out into a distant humming to Clint's ears. His mind was running ten miles a minute.

Those people were looking for Bruce. And Natasha wanted _Clint_ to join. Why? He was the guy who'd started it all. The shit magnet. The vanilla guy with a bow and arrow. Was it just because he'd helped her in the past?

It didn't matter. It didn't matter. Fuck, she was still talking, maybe she'd canceled the offer and Clint hadn't even heard? The traffic lights were red again. For how long had he stood there staring in space?

“I'm in!” he blurted.

She stared at him and he realized he'd cut her off mid-sentence.

“Sorry,” he said again. “Sorry. I'm in if the offer still stands.”

His heart was still pounding like mad in his chest. He could tell that she'd started thinking he'd gone half-crazy on his own, but he didn't care. He was going to be part of a team again, and that team was going to find Bruce. And that team was going to help with cleaning up the awful mess he'd made of everyone's lives. And maybe, in the end, they might even start to forgive him for everything he'd done.

“The offer still stands,” she said.

She quirked a thin, doubtful smile as the light went green again. “You took some convincing, Barton.”

“Sorry,” he said yet again.

Natasha scoffed, then nodded at a completely not suspicious van parked three streets away. “Let's go then, Hawkeye. You'll ride the Transsiberian some other time.”

“I thought it wasn't a train,” Clint said, following her along the sidewalk.

She smiled at him and they walked away in the snow, away from the Yaroslavski Train Station. The street they hadn't crossed lit up in red again.

 

A train escaped the depths of the building and picked up speed along the rails; it was going east, towards its terminus—an industrial town in Siberia, whose name Clint really couldn't remember. Something like Ust-Ordynski, perhaps.

It didn't matter anymore.

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Please, tell me what you thought. :)


	3. Old friends

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoops! Sorry for the delay in writing/posting/beta'ing, the flu got the better of us. Now it's back!
> 
> Before we proceed, though, quick disclaimer: I am incredibly lazy at research not crucially essential to the plot. It just needed a snowy background in Europe and it had to have a name, so I picked Russia. My depiction of it, and of many other places and countries as well, is (and will be) inaccurate at best, grossly wrong at most. Let’s blame it all on ‘but this is the Marvel world so things are different’—or even better, on über-hardcore pathetic fallacy. Thank you.
> 
> (I formally apologize to those of you readers who actually live there; please suspend your disbelief, although you are hereby allowed to roll your eyes at me.)

 

 

 

 

 

“This is the weirdest extraction _ever,”_ Clint murmured.

“I don't see what you're whining about,” Natasha said calmly, leaning against the wall of the van.

“I'm not whining. I'm just saying.”

They were at the back of the vehicle, rolling through the night and further out of town. The driver stared straight ahead with a determination verging on hypnosis; all the other guys at the back of the van were looking away from Clint and Natasha as though they might have been struck by lightning for crossing their gaze. Clint felt like the Godfather in... well, _The Godfather._

“No, but, isn't posing as mafia lords on the run batshit crazy?” he insisted. “I mean, if we really _were_ mafia lords on the run, wouldn't we be trying to pose as, y'know, something _else?_ Still just saying.”

“You look the part of a scruffy deposed mobster,” she shrugged.

“No, I don't. Russian mobsters wear tracksuits.”

“Look, as long as you don't try to speak Russian, we'll be fine. Being on the run sure didn't improve your accent.”

They were talking in a mix of French, Arabic and German to avoid blowing their cover. After all, Natasha _had_ once been a mafia wife. During their time as the wonder twins of SHIELD, they'd gotten used to work with no extraction; but this was the most whacked out plan Clint had ever heard. Even hiding in bags of rice would had seemed wiser. In what world did fugitives disguise themselves as _other_ fugitives?

The van stopped; they must be out in the outskirts of the steppes, where the forest begun. Clint could see dark trees outlined against the darker sky out the windshield. The driver barked a few words in something which wasn't exactly Russian.

“What's that?” Clint frowned.

“Ukrainian,” Natasha said, getting up to stretch herself. “Get up, Clint. They're going to kill us in about two minutes.”

Clint blinked up at her. “Uh—say what?”

“I told them we were part of Drakov's family. The driver just checked and guess what, we’re not.”

Clint sighed, then got up. He wasn’t even surprised.

“How come they didn’t check _before_ taking us out of town?” he still asked.

“Couldn’t risk offending us,” Natasha shrugged. “Besides, they saved time bringing us here, since this the forest where they dump their corpses anyway.”

“Charming,” Clint muttered.

They stood there face to face; she had a slight smirk in the corner of her full lips. He sighed again, but then clenched his fists and braced himself.

The driver opened the door to get out of the van; and the second he slipped out of sight— _show time._

It was dangerous for Clint to fight alongside Natasha, because if given the chance, he'd just stand there and stare at her. She fought like a goddamn ballet dancer, which she had been, in another life, twirling and arching and bending. Clint just punched and kicked and overall tried to stay alive while struggling to actually _move_ in such a cramped space. He slammed one guy against the wall of the van, ducked to avoid Natasha's kick which landed in the face of another goon, then grabbed the one aiming at her and head-butted him before snatching his gun and knocking him out with it. All in all, it took a little less than nine seconds.

Clint caught his breath then wiped the blood off his forehead. He poked the guy he'd taken out. “That'll teach them not to take shady hitchhikers.”

She snorted at him, but he knew her enough to tell she'd liked this. They hadn't fought side by side like this in a very long time.

The doors of the van slammed open; the driver, who'd walked around the vehicle in a little less than nine seconds, just gaped at this scene of devastation before Natasha kneed him in the face. He collapsed in the snow without a word.

“There,” she said, not even breathless. “I'll grab the keys; you throw the rest of them out.”

“We're in the middle of the forest,” Clint objected, slipping the gun in his belt.

“They got cell phones.”

The archer winced, but they couldn't just take those guys with them; so he rolled them out while Natasha got behind the wheel. Clint slammed the doors of the van shut again, then climbed on the passenger seat from the inside.

“Where are we going now?” he said, plopping down and twisting to reach his bag behind the seat.

“A little bit further.”

She turned on the headlights again and restarted the engine. The dashboard blinked on and the heating systems breathed out a puff of warm air; the radio hummed and crackled to life. The first notes of a song were heard—

—and Clint punched the switch so hard he broke the radio.

Natasha startled, then gave him a weird look. The engine kept humming quietly for a few seconds of silence.

“Don't like _Amazing Grace_ all that much, uh?” she said eventually.

“I—” Clint said, heart still pounding.

He shook his head. “I've got a headache.”

She raised an eyebrow; of course, she didn't believe his pathetic excuse for a second. He swallowed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He was trembling.

_Calm the fuck down, for Christ's sake._

“S'okay,” he muttered. He closed his eyes again. “Just drive.”

 

*

 

Clint was snoring against the window by the time Natasha killed the engine again. The sudden lack of vibrations stirred him awake; he straightened up on his seat and looked outside. Their surroundings were pitch black.

“Where are we?”

“Close,” she said cryptically. “And this is where we get rid of the van.”

She smirked at him. “Up for a bit of arson?”

He did his best to smile back and muttered, “Always.”

Truth was, he'd trashed a vehicle so many times it wasn't even funny anymore. He broke the windows one by one and dunked a homemade wick into the gas tank without even really thinking about it. He scratched a match and the tiny flame lazily danced up the fuse, giving them plenty of time to walk away. When the van finally exploded in a big ball of fire, they were sitting on a snowdrift at a safe distance. Clint could still feel the heat of it on his face.

“Clint,” Natasha said.

She was staring at him, not at the fire. “Really, what's going on?”

Clint shook his head.

She went back to gazing at the flaming wreck, which lit up the woods and cast dancing shadows on the crooked trees, like some kind of modern fairytale.

“It's never going to be the way it was before,” she said softly. “But I believe we can build something else. Something new.”

Clint snorted. He wouldn't have picked himself, of all people, to build anything.

The van collapsed in an explosion of sparkles. They stared at the smoldering ruins for five long minutes. The air smelled of smoke and snow.

“Thanks,” Clint murmuring tentatively. “For... coming for me.”

She didn't answer, but put a hand on his shoulder as she got up from her crouch. He stood up as well, still hypnotized by the wreck glowering in the darkness.

“Come on,” she said. “We're almost there.”

 

*

 

They followed a small, narrow path in the woods at the light of a flashlight. Clint wondered where they were going. Had someone used those five months to build a secret lair in the forest or something? He didn't think Russia was the best place for that.

“Hey, do you—” he began softly, turning round, but there was no one behind him.

He felt a small shock, like he'd missed a step in a staircase.

“Clint, I'm right here,” Natasha said.

He turned around; her flashlight swiped across his face. He raised a hand to protect his eyes and caught up with her.

“I was ahead of you from the start,” she said in a low, worried voice. “You _know_ that, right?”

“I know that,” he muttered.

He couldn't tell her that he really did—that he hadn't turned to talk to _her._ He'd turned to talk to someone who hadn't been there for five months.

Clint just kept _forgetting._ Even though virtually everything was likely to trigger a random memory, he kept forgetting.

He couldn't see Natasha's face in the shadows, but her silence was telling enough. Clint readjusted his backpack. “You wanna move? I'm freezing here.”

Still without a word, she turned away and began walking again; he followed her, snow crunching under his feet, staring at its bluish glow in the darkness of the woods. For a minute, he thought she would make another comment, but she didn't push it, and she didn't leave his useless ass alone in the woods, either. That was a big relief.

“There,” she said after a while.

Clint followed her into a large clearing and blinked. It wasn't a secret lair or an underground base.

It was a Quinjet. Except this was the most fucking _enormous_ Quinjet Clint had ever seen. It almost looked like a Boeing airliner, actually, as far as he could tell in the thick darkness.

“C-17 Globemaster,” he read, squinting.

“So you found him,” someone said in the dark.

Clint snapped round at the man walking towards them. It was...

“ _Ward?”_

Last time Clint seen Agent Grant Ward had been during that damn press conference, struggling to contain himself as Clint proceeded to fling shit towards the proverbial fan. If Ward had knocked him out then, everything would have been very, very different today. Clint glanced at Natasha. “I thought SHIELD wasn't in on this?”

Ward shrugged. “We're not. As a matter of fact, I'm not even here.”

 _Yeah, got it._ Ward was subletting them SHIELD equipment. Clint bet Fury was probably very busy making a show of looking the other way. _Official_ and _classified_ had a slightly different meaning those days. And the civil war wasn't going on among the civilians only.

Perhaps the WSC weren’t controlling _everything,_ even now.

The belly of the plane started opening; a dim rectangle of light spread on the snow. Ward shook Natasha's hand and said, “Godspeed then. Take care of the Bus.”

“We certainly will,” she said.

He gave a small nod at Clint, then vanished into the woods after a last longing look on the huge plane, as though he would miss it. Clint sensed a story there; five months ago, he might have asked. But right now, he was too tired. He just wanted a nap.

He climbed inside the plane with Natasha and found himself in a small cargo area. He could tell that two or three cars had been parked there until recently; but they had been replaced by a normal-sized Quinjet. The belly of the plane closed behind them, and they climbed up spiraling stairs into a passenger area. It was quiet and dark and distinctly... old-fashioned. Oddly familiar, in a way.

Clint began to relax a little for what felt like the first time since Christmas. He was… he was safe, sort of.

“Here's your cabin,” Natasha said, nodding at the door. “Settle in. We'll be in the command room.”

Clint nodded and pushed the door, without even asking who was ‘we’. He didn’t have the energy.

The cabin was small and the bed unusually large; he had almost no space left to drop his backpack. There was a small shower in the corner. Clint stood in the dark for a long minute before realizing he hadn't turned on the lights. He still didn't; he just took off his jacket before lying down on the bed with a deep sigh.

It was so strange, he thought, staring at the wall. How much things could change in the course of one day. Maybe this was just a dream. Waking up, he'd still be in his crappy hotel room in Moscow, waiting for the next train to Siberia.

He knew he should have felt glad. His teammates hadn't given up the fight; and for some twisted reason, they wanted him in. Like Natasha had said, nothing could ever be like before, but Clint had something to look forward to. And they wanted to bring Banner in.

He should have been glad. Steve was alive—that should have been a tremendous relief. And it was, _intellectually,_ he knew it _was,_ but he only felt hollowed out, as though he'd used up his hope supplies so thoroughly there weren't even leftovers to be scraped off.

God, he just wanted to rest for now. Rest, and think of nothing.

 

*

 

He woke up to the rumbling of engines all around him. His first thought was the realization that Natasha had probably meant for him to join everyone else in the command room yesterday. But no one had come to wake him up.

Clint straightened up, then slowly rolled up the blind over the tiny window. The blinding light of the upper atmosphere dazzled him for a second. They were high above the clouds.

He had slept for a long time, yet he felt like shit. He didn't sleep well. Not that he had nightmares—that would have been too easy. Nightmares were a mercy; you could wake up from them. But Clint had dreams. Mostly unformulated ones, shapeless memories of warmth and softness, a human weight on his chest, and he let himself sink down and down in the dark heat...

Then he woke up; and everything was clear and cold and cutting.

This time was no different and the bright, white light depressed him. He stared at his bag and distractedly noticed that despite everything, the quiet hum of the plane soothed him a little. He'd always liked being above the ground.

He knew that inside the bag were a razor and a small piece of soap. And just across the narrow room, so near he could have touched it by extending his arm, was the shower. He just had to get up.

He stared at his bag. He felt completely spaced out. He could have been completely alone on this plane, and it would have been all the same to him. He wondered what would happen if he stayed here—just stayed in this tiny room until someone came for him. Maybe nobody would. Maybe he would just stay here forever, not moving, simply using up the supplies of air of the little cabin until he died.

He stared at his bag. He hadn't opened it in more than four days. Inside were also his bow and quiver. Clint took a deep breath, rubbed his face with both hands, then decided that he _was_ grateful to be here. And that he would take a fucking shower, because it was about time he manned the fuck up. Things were likely to improve from now on; he just had to convince himself of this.

_Is this how you feel all the time, Bruce?_

God, there it was. The sharpness in his chest, jabbing and prodding. And like every day, he got up, only so he could move and do things, anything to forget about that throbbing ache, to walk off the pain, at least a little.

 

*

 

Someone knocked on the door.

Clint had put on new jeans and a clean t-shirt, he'd shaved and he'd even given himself a self-haircut. It didn't wipe out the dark rings under his eyes or changed anything to his hollowed cheeks, but it was a start. Enough, maybe, to open that door.

So he did; but it hadn't occurred to him that it meant actually facing someone. And not just anyone.

_Aw, crap._

“Clint,” Jessica said, in a slightly breathless voice.

He just blinked at her; she made a tentative, aborted gesture, stood in awkwardness for a long second, then eventually took him in her arms and hugged him.

Clint stiffened for a minute; but then he relaxed and held her in return. Her hair smelled really nice, and he could feel her breasts pressing against his chest, her whole body, warm and solid.

“Your hair smells really nice,” he said.

She let out some sort of strangled chuckle and pulled back to smirk at him. “Really. That's all you're gonna say to me?”

_Thank God I didn't say the other thing._

She let him go and smiled a little more broadly at him. “You haven't changed, Clint.”

“Really?” he said dubiously.

Only when she frowned at him did he realize it was kind of an odd reaction. “I mean—I mean... thanks. You neither.”

It was more than a little awkward, now. Last time he'd seen her, he'd dumped her. Sort of. And the time before that, _she'd_ dumped him. She looked like the same thoughts were crossing her mind, and forced herself to smile a bit more brightly.

“It's good to have you here,” she said.

“Thanks,” he repeated. “It's good to be here.” And that was the truth, it really was. He just had a hard time feeling it right now.

But he would adjust, right? Eventually.

“Come on,” she said. “Let me show you around. Are you hungry?”

“Yeah.” _This_ he could feel.

He was barefoot, but he didn't mind it all that much. It felt oddly relaxed. Besides, there were carpets on most of the passenger floors. Clint was struck, once more, by how familiar and warm this place felt.

_Old-fashioned..._

“Is this—” he stopped himself.

She looked at him. “What?”

Shit, he really had a problem with lost people. They felt more real to him than old friends standing right before him.

“No. Nothing. Somehow, this place just feels like...”

“Coulson?”

He blinked, taken short.

“Uh—yeah.” He swallowed. “We worked together a lot before—wait. You knew him?”

“No,” she said. “But I met him a week ago when he gave us the keys to this baby.” She patted the wall. “You know Ward, right? He was on his team until it got dismantled last month.”

“ _Ward?_ But he...”

The words died on his lips. He looked around again, then back at Jessica.

He hesitated, then said, “You're fucking kidding me.”

She said nothing. Clint took a deep breath, then ran his hand over his face. Fuck, this was SHIELD, he should have seen this coming.

“I'm going to kill Fury.”

“Yeah, surprise,” she said. “Sometimes, we do get people back.”

Clint dropped his hands and stared at her in mild astonishment. He opened his mouth, closed it. Thinking of what she'd just _said._

“Clint,” she said, mistaking his confusion for guilt. “You know we don't blame you for what happened. And we _are_ getting it all back. All we need is a bit of time.”

He felt strange. He felt... hopeful again, he realized. Just a teeny bit.

Because if Coulson could come back, if Steve Rogers was back too, then maybe... maybe it didn't have to stop here. Maybe Clint could really believe in what Natasha thought, in what Jessica had just said. He might actually start to _feel_ what he knew he should be experiencing. He wasn't quite there yet, but the thick shell around him had somehow cracked open.

_Sometimes we do get people back._

“You wanna go on?” she said.

He nodded fervently. “Yeah. Show me.”

He followed her around the passenger deck without running into anyone else. “Who's on the plane with us?” he asked her as she showed him the tiny kitchen.

“Just the Widow and Logan for now,” she said. “We're on our way to pick up Cap. Stark's on board but only metaphorically—he's got a lot of problems right now. You know.”

“Um…” Clint muttered. “Actually, you might want to brief me on this one.”

She blinked at him. “Seriously? You've never heard of the Mandarin?”

Clint scratched the back of his head, averting his gaze. He had gradually lost track of the news ever since they'd shown him Steve's blood trickling in the dust.

“Sounds like a supervillain,” he said lamely.

She snorted. “Try terrorist. And Stark gave him his home address after Christmas.”

Clint shrugged. It did sound like something Tony Stark would do.

But when he looked up, he saw the expectant look in Jess's eyes, and he realized he'd reacted in the wrong way again. “Oh,” he said, “that was... pretty reckless, I guess.”

Jessica staring at him in mild disbelief. “Yes, Clint,” she said. “Yes, it _was.”_

Bruce would have understood. He knew how it was to lose track of the world on the run. He knew how it was to take even the craziest things in stride, and he knew what it was when you stopped caring out of self-preservation.

But Bruce wasn't here, was he?

“Clint, what _happened_ to you?” Jessica said, and he understood, from the briskness of her tone, that she'd withheld those words for quite some time.

Maybe she'd rehearsed this conversation under the shower, before going to sleep, while waiting in front of his door. “You vanished _way_ before everything turned sour. Everyone wondered where you were—you left no note, no explanation, nothing. And now you show up again and you're even more fucked-up than before!”

“Ouch,” he muttered.

“You know what I mean!”

He nodded. He did know.

“I guess I just stayed alone for too long,” he suggested.

It was the honest truth. Yet he felt like he'd never lied so much in his life. He couldn't tell them about Bruce, because honestly. Natasha simply couldn't understand. _Love is for children—_ and indeed, her adult self was too hardened for it. Clint knew it, and it made him feel so powerless it kept him awake at night sometimes.

And Jessica? They had tried so hard to be together. She'd hoped for so much from him, and he hadn't been able to give it to her. He had done his best, but he simply couldn't. Yet it had flowed out of him and towards Bruce, in an irrepressible current he still couldn't understand. Bruce Banner. A small, sad, scrawny dude Clint didn't even want to fuck.

There was no explaining that. There was only the pain in his chest.

“Sorry,” he said, a bit breathless. “That's all I got.”

She made a powerless, frustrated gesture.

“Give it time?” he asked, somehow sheepishly.

She shook her head, but she looked mostly sorry now. Sorry and exasperated. “Sure. Fine. Whatever, Clint.”

She waved her hand around. “Well, this _is_ the kitchen; knock yourself out. We'll get to the East coast in half an hour.”

“Okay,” he mumbled. “Thanks.”

She was already gone. Only then did he realize that he hadn't even asked her how _she_ was doing. How those five months had been for her, after she'd gotten out of the hospital and found her world burned to ashes. All he'd done was piss her off again.

The sharp light of high altitude made the ridges of reality too cutting and aggressive for his sensitive eyes. He closed them and thought experimentally, _I'm home._

It felt nothing like it. He felt nothing at all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading. Comments make me happy! ^^


	4. On the horizon

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Looking for Jessica?”

“No,” Clint said sullenly, slipping inside the cockpit to plonk down in the copilot seat.

Natasha glanced away from him with a slight smirk. “Well, you two certainly didn't waste any time.”

“Don’t get started.”

He breathed in, then out. “I can… take over from you?” he offered.

She looked at him again. He was still barefoot, in jeans and t-shirt. Yeah, he—guessed he was a little cold with the AC, but he hadn't paid enough attention to what he was wearing until now.

“Did you get something to eat?” she asked.

“Yes,” he lied.

Her eyes didn't leave him for a long minute; then she silently unbuckled herself. He smiled at her and mumbled, “Thanks.”

“Do you even know how to fly this thing?” she frowned, getting up.

“Got the universal basics,” he shrugged as they changed places.

The commands seemed to jump in his hands indeed when he settled in the deep seat. The rudder bar was tough on his bare feet, but he hardly cared over the priceless sight of the endless sea of clouds, unrolling before him.   

There was a long silence.

“It was an op,” Natasha murmured.

She leaned back a little and shut up just long enough for Clint to understand where she was going with this.

“Steve didn't know anything,” she went on. “It was Fury's last lie to him; he knew he would lose Cap after that, but the WSC was gaining too much power with the public. Killing off Captain America—now that would overturn the tide.”

Clint scoffed loudly. “You call that _overturn?_ Everything went straight to hell after that!”

“Yes—because people are fighting each other now, instead of universally praying for our demise,” she said calmly.

Clint let out a pressured breath. “How did you do it?” he asked.

Natasha sighed a little.

“It was a decoy bullet,” she said. “Loaded with a sedative and a capsule of pressurized blood.”

He snorted in dark irony. “Is this also how they got Michael Jackson?”

“You've grown bitter,” she murmured in a strangely subdued tone.

He closed his eyes for a split second. _Bitter._ He remembered the airport in Germany, the images on the giant screen, and how he'd rushed for the toilets so he wouldn’t empty himself right there and then in the middle of the hall.

“Cap wasn't happy,” she went on calmly, “But coming back from the dead would have added too much chaos—he said himself it was better to lay low for now. To wait for the right time. Not to mention he found himself a little friend to play with.”

Clint took a deep breath. “That guy with the robot arm?”

“It's complicated,” she said.

Clint didn't insist. He didn’t really want to know.

 

*

 

 _Bitter,_ he mused later as he went down the spiraling stairs to end up in the cargo area. He didn't know if he was bitter. He knew he was sore and tired and he wished the last year hadn't happened. Did that qualify as fucking _bitter?_

He let his bag drop on the dusty floor and looked blandly at the small target at the other end of the room. Anyone could have taken a shot like that. Seriously, he didn't even need his bow. He could just throw an arrow at it.

“Out of practice, bub?”

Clint looked up, startled.

Logan was leaning against the handrail one floor up; he pulled his cigar out of his mouth and blew a thick cloud of smoke towards him. Clint had completely forgotten he was here, too.

“You shouldn't be smoking on a plane,” he muttered, bowing down to unzip his bag.

He had to dig for almost a minute to pull his bow and quiver out; when he straightened up again, Logan was raising an eyebrow at him. “I see safety's your primary concern.”

Clint felt a disproportionate anger rise inside of him—and deflate at once, as though he had tried to blow up a pierced balloon. Everything did that, hopes and concerns and other feelings, it all fell flat and deadened inside of him.

He snapped his bow open and the bowstring gave him a nasty slap on the wrist, which did nothing to improve his mood.

“Why are you even here?” he said without looking at him, tightening the string. “Nat told me you were out there looking for Xavier.”

“Found him,” Logan said calmly, puffing out another cloud of smoke. “Or rather he found me. Not many of us can hide from him.”

“Yeah, guess even the loneliest wolves get chipped, uh?” Clint said, drawing the string to test it.

He needed a new one; this was a SHIELD plane, so he'd probably find what he needed in the armory. But this one would do for today. He nocked an arrow and tried to slow his breathing. God, he hadn't done this in nearly two months.

“You're one to speak,” Logan said, the corner of his lips half-curling up.

Clint opened his fingers and the arrow hit the target an inch from the center. The target was beneath Logan, so he couldn't see it; but he still said with another exhalation of smoke, “You just missed, didn't you?”

“I don't miss,” Clint muttered.

He shot another arrow which severed the first one in half—but not as neatly as he'd hoped. The bowstring was crap, that was a given. And also, he still couldn't bring himself to care.

He knew more than anyone how caring could affect your aim.

“I never _fucking_ miss,” he spat, and shot another arrow straight into the bull's eye. _There._ But it didn't fix the other two.

Logan was still staring down at him. Clint lowered his bow and looked up. “What do you want, Logan?”

He shrugged. “Nothing specific. Your girlfriends are boring.”

It was Clint's turn to raise an eyebrow. Natasha and Jessica were a lot of things, but ‘boring’ certainly didn't add in. “Yeah, well, find someone else to do manly stuff like punching walls and drinking beer.”

“That's what happens when you try to be a hero, bub,” Logan said, taking a drag. “Shit goes down.”

Clint lowered his bow again. “Where the fuck did _that_ come from?”

“I wasn't in on the Barton act,” Logan said. “They sent Cyclops. Guy got a big hard-on for that kind of righteous shit.”

“But _you_ were more clever than us idealistic morons, and you _still_ got fucked by the WSC,” Clint said, his patience wearing out. “And now you're blaming the guy whose name was stamped on the fucking law. That it?”

“As a matter of fact,” Logan said, throwing the stub away, “I wouldn't mind kicking your sorry ass.”

Clint's sharp eyes couldn't help following the stub which fell through space like a shooting star before bouncing on the floor, spluttering small sparkles which died out at once. All he could think was, _Coulson's gonna be off the walls._

Then what Logan had said hit him with full force.

He looked up again. “Wait, you're serious? You're blaming me for the whole thing?”

He should be feeling angry or indignant, maybe. But all he felt was some kind of nasty relief—some poisoned gratitude for someone finally saying it to his face; and for once, it didn't fade away and only grew stronger as Logan nodded in confirmation before leaning forward against the handrail, clasping it with both hands.

Clint stared at him for another moment, still gaping. Then he muttered, “Fuck,” under his breath.

He dropped his bow and spread out his arms. “You know what? I’m done. Just fucking come at me.”

Logan didn't have to be asked twice. He jumped over the handrail and let himself fall heavily between Clint and his target. He turned to look at it, then turned back with a smirk, dark eyes boring into Clint's.

“I knew you'd missed.”

And Clint just snapped.

 

Logan played it fair. He didn't use his claws—didn't even pretend he would to get Clint to back off—but he pulled no punches either. Clint knew he was kind of pathetic thinking he could hold his own against Wolverine, but if Natasha or Jessica wandered down the cargo bay, he could still pretend they were sparring. Or he could simply acknowledge the truth—that he'd just wanted to give in to _one_ fucking impulse where he was the only one at risk of getting hurt.

And he did get hurt, mainly by trying to hurt Logan—he almost broke one of his knuckles with his last punch. Then he took a jab to the stomach and another to the jaw and next thing he knew, he was spitting blood on the floor and trying to get up one last time. It wasn’t long before he was thrown back down—and it was already over.

Clint lay down on his back, out of breath, drenched in sweat, and more sore than he'd felt ever since his last encounter with the Tracksuits. Logan's adamantium bones felt pretty much the same as iron bats. Getting his ass handed to him was a feeling Clint had neither missed nor forgotten.

“Got what you wanted?” Logan said, lighting up another cigar.

He wasn't even out of breath.

“Fuck you,” Clint spluttered hoarsely at the ceiling.

He rolled on his side with an effort and sat up, panting. He raised a heavy hand to wipe the blood off his chin. Logan didn't offer him help to get up again, and Clint was secretly glad he was being a bastard, because then he could be mad at someone for something which wasn't entirely his own fault.

He looked up just in time to see Logan wipe his thumb over a small scratch on his cheekbone. The tiny wound healed and vanished as though he had simply wiped off a bit of blood. Hell, maybe he had.

“Did _you_ get what you fucking wanted?” Clint asked sourly, getting up at last.

“Pretty much,” Logan simply said.

For a blazing second of madness, Clint hated him; but he knew he wasn't actually angry at him. He was just angry.

And his anger was of the most useless and aimless kind, so it shrank down at last, just like everything else, and flattened pathetically until there was nothing left of it and he felt empty again, so damn empty, with only the constant jab of this throbbing ache in his chest. He didn't know if he wanted to cry or curse or just go to sleep.

“I wouldn't say you're our best recruit yet, bub,” Logan said, blowing out a puff of blue smoke.

Clint laughed bitterly, because there was nothing else to do. “Well,” he said. “Can't argue with you there.”

He picked up his quiver and bow and left the room, trying not to limp.

 

*

 

“Clint?” Natasha said, pushing the door open.

Clint scrambled up and tried not to look like he had been lying down on his bunk and doing nothing for nearly four hours. “Hey. Nat.”

She blinked at him.

“How the hell did you manage to get beaten up?”

Clint winced a little, then a little bit more when it pulled at his black eye and bruised jaw. “It's nothing,” he said. “I just ran into Logan.”

“You mean literally?”

Clint just shrugged and Natasha murmured something in Russian which could have translated as, _I don't have time for this._ “Well, anyway—we're waiting for you in the command room.”

Clint unfolded his aching body and followed her. The carpet chafed a little under his bare feet, and he hadn't noticed a simple pleasure like this in so long that it felt absurdly, ridiculously good. He felt like the volume control of his brain had been disabled. Everything was either disproportionately intense or mutely dull. As it was, the sensation dried up and withered in mere seconds, leaving him hollow yet again.

Jessica and Logan were waiting in the command room indeed, but not for them; Jessica was trying to get some sort of video-conference thing to connect while Logan just glared at the screen as though he could scare it into working. None of them acknowledged Clint, and he really marveled at how this was probably his record time for getting people fed up with him.

“There,” Jessica suddenly said. “I got it.”

“About time,” Logan growled.

Xavier's image progressively appeared on the screen until he sat in the middle of it like the subject of some Renaissance painting.

“Hello,” he said in a distorted voice but with a distinct English accent. “I am Charles Xavier. It's an honor to finally meet with the Secret Avengers.”

 _Is that how we're calling ourselves?_ Clint thought. He found it more ridiculous than not. Then Xavier's small, thoughtful eyes brushed over him and he suddenly remembered that this guy was a psychic. Well, he probably couldn't read his mind from so far away, but who knew. Clint wasn't even sure _where_ he was.

Xavier turned with raised eyebrows to Logan, who reluctantly said, “Jessica Drew, Natasha Romanov,” his face didn't change, “and Clint Barton.”

Xavier's features remained just as smooth and expressionless. Man, Clint hated being the elephant in the room.

“A pleasure,” Xavier said. “I am afraid I don't have the time, or the required level of safety, to introduce all my students; but be certain all of them are on board.”

“On board with what?” Clint said and immediately felt like an idiot.

“With the preservation of this world, even though it might be wary of us at the moment,” Xavier smiled. “For us to be allies is, I believe, a very good thing.”

Clint tried not to look too dubious, but they were only four people on a plane with virtually nowhere to go, and Xavier probably had enough problems of his own.

“I don't suppose you could disclose your location,” Jessica said.

“I don't fully trust this line as yet.”

“And that's _all_ you don't trust?” Clint said, unable to keep the disbelief out of his voice.

He'd been in Europe for five months—he'd seen how mutants were treated everywhere. He couldn't believe that Xavier would just befriend a team consisting solely of two non-mutant women who had refused to expose their respective records, and of _the_ non-mutant ordinary dude who had pretty much sparked off the witch hunts. As it'd turned out, the Barton Act was a fucking lose-lose situation. All of those who had refused to support it in the first place now came off as cowardly, hypocritical bastards; and all those who _had_ gotten behind it were now blamed for the WSC's forcible disclosure of all other superhuman records. As a result, half of the superhuman world was pissed at the other half, and the entire regular world was pissed at the superhumans.

Double civil war in the span of five months. Yeah, Clint had really outdone himself this time.

It was really no wonder Logan had wanted to beat the hell out of him—he was not the only one; at least he’d had the honesty to admit it. And it was no wonder Fury had gotten so desperate as to use the only tool still at his disposal: the public's love for Captain America.

Thing was, the WSC thrived on chaos and disorganization. They had never been in favor of the Avengers Initiative; Iron Man annoyed them enough already, but organized superheroes freaked them out. And Clint had given them the perfect opportunity to kick the anthill while still preserving their public image, because _officially,_ all they had done was be a little overzealous in fulfilling Clint Barton's wish to make all superhumans responsible for their actions. (Really fucking _outdone_ yourself, Clint.)

So Fury had decided to kick their anthill right back, and he had shot the Martin Luther King Jr. of superheroes for all the world to see. Cue _third_ civil war, between the pro-heroes and the anti-heroes, with a side of superhuman discrimination and increased mutant-related violence. Clint had lost track of his own disasters in his desperate race; or maybe he had been too guilty to dwell upon them. But now that he had stopped running, the relative safety of the plane hadn't left him much room to do anything else but think about the planetary consequences of his own actions.

Charles Xavier, of course, knew all about this. His school had been hit the hardest—destroyed nearly a few hours after Steve's fake death, way before the trashing of the Avengers mansion. And most of his protégés were _underage mutants._ Shit had hit the fan for everyone—but for them? It must have been complete hell.

But Xavier only nodded calmly. “I trust Logan,” he said. “And he trusts you.”

 _Not me, he doesn't,_ Clint thought as Logan snorted a little.

“Now,” Xavier said. “I don't have many resources, but I am confident this situation will change; and an alliance would still profit both our groups greatly.”

“Agreed,” Natasha said. “We need to reassemble, and we need to solve our common problem. We'll take any intel you have on any of these goals.”

“As a matter of fact, I have discovered in Ukraine—”

But then something suddenly fell from the ceiling behind Xavier to crash on what sounded like a very plush carpet, making the image jump. Xavier startled and Logan's claws almost jerked out at the interruption; but the professor looked mostly unimpressed as he turned around—Clint realized he was in a wheelchair.

“What are you doing here?” Xavier asked calmly, because apparently the thing which had fallen from the ceiling was a person—and a person he knew.

“I am sorry—I just—I heard—” said a familiar voice.

A young man got up, stared into the camera and yelled, “ _Clint!”_

Clint's eyes widened. He pushed Jessica a little to get closer to the screen. “Kurt?” he asked hesitantly, even though the yellow eyes and blue skin didn't leave much to doubt. “Kurt Wagner?”

“ _Mein Freund,_ it really is you,” Kurt said in an overjoyed voice. “I am so glad!”

“So you did reach the school,” Clint said, unable not to smile back. “Hey, good for you, man!”

Kurt looked a lot less underfed but still very skinny; the patterns on his cheeks, the sharpness of his teeth and the brightness of his eyes were all unchanged. “Yes—it is all thanks to you,” he said.

Clint felt a little uncomfortable when he remembered he had hidden his last name from him in Germany; and his guilt had never been so great at the thought of what mutants had gone through because of his stupid initiative. And yet, if not for Xavier softly but firmly grabbing his arm, Kurt obviously wouldn't have minded adding the founder of the Barton Act to his Skype contacts.

“Kurt,” Xavier said in the same gentle-but-firm tone. “This is a private conversation.”

“Yes, professor,” Kurt said, scrambling up. His English had greatly improved, but he still had a very thick accent. “Of course, professor. I apologize. I did not mean to eavesdrop.”

“I am certain,” Xavier said, but he still seemed a little annoyed. Clint guessed privacy and safety were relative things when living among people who could read minds, teleport and phase through walls.

Kurt beamed enthusiastically at Clint again, then walked out the door like a normal person in what was obviously an effort to be polite. Clint couldn't help feeling more ill-at-ease than ever when Xavier's shrewd eyes lingered upon him again. It was not a kind look.

“Well,” the professor simply said. “We'll get in touch again very soon.”

The connection ended shortly after Jessica returned the promise.

An awkward silence settled in the room. They were only four, but Clint felt like he was the focus of attention of a whole crowd.

“Who's Kurt Wagner?” Natasha asked eventually.

“...Some guy I met in Germany?” Clint said. “I kind of, uh. Saved his life. I guess.”

“What were you doing in Germany?” Jessica asked, bewildered.

Clint gave her a dead stare. “Tourism.”

Logan snorted and Natasha raised an eyebrow. But it wasn't like Clint could tell them the actual—stupid—reason he had left everything to go to Europe. Chaos everywhere, the world as they knew it falling apart, and Clint had left just to... seriously, even actual tourism would have been less of a ridiculous reason. He hadn't even been 100% positive Bruce was _actually_ there.

But he couldn't stay in his Brooklyn apartment. He physically _couldn't_ stay. After Christmas, he couldn't sleep, couldn't stand still; he kept pacing and going from one room to another and going down the stairs only to climb back up again, with people asking him why wasn't he just taking the elevator? And it felt like being stabbed every damn time but he couldn't _tell_ them, just like he couldn't tell Natasha and Jessica and Logan, because _how,_ when you are a grown man going on his forties, when the world is crumbling into a planetary civil war, how are you supposed to tell people that you are _heartbroken?_

It was so ridiculous it hurt. So fucking ridiculous. He was supposed to be a superhero. Superheroes don't pine or brood or any of that lame shit. They don't let themselves be brought down by such things as—goddammit, _love is for children._ No, superheroes just cope, and take it, and get up and move on, and try to clean up their stupendous mess instead of focusing on their own sorry ass. But Clint Barton obviously couldn't do it.

And well, that was probably saying something about him, wasn't it?

Cue his dumb ass on a plane with a one-way ticket to cross the Atlantic. Ending up in Zurich completely jet-lagged. In the middle of the busy airport, with families and lovers and friends and whatnot reuniting all around him. People looking for strangers waiting for them. Nobody's little sign was saying _Clint Barton._ Nobody wanted to kill him then; it was only the beginning, and people hadn't yet realized how massively he had screwed up. So he'd stayed there, alone, until everyone was gone, he'd stayed staring in space for maybe two hours and thinking, with that sharp jab of pain in the middle of all this emptiness he'd become, thinking,

_what the hell do I do now?_

 

Call Kate.

That's what he'd done.

Call Kate.      

  


“You are _where??”_

“...Zurich.”

“Zurich? As in Zurich, _Switzerland?_ What on Earth are you doing there?”

“It was the cheapest ticket.”

“It was—Clint, I don't give a flying fuck, _why are you in Europe?”_

Oh, she had already guessed it wasn't for a mission. Or else she would not have asked so vehemently. Maybe she was worried; maybe she already knew it couldn't possibly end well.

“I checked SHIELD's data,” he had said. “They don't have much but profiling says Banner's most likely to be in Europe right now. Although I don't know where.”

There had been a long, long, _long_ silence. So long that Clint had started to wonder whether Kate hadn't hung up on him. But Kate knew, she was the only one who knew, and she was terribly kind—she had always been too kind, because instead of yelling at him for being the mushy, selfish prick he was, she'd said “I'll look into it. I'll try—I'll help you from here.”

 

And then Steve Rogers had died, and she had stopped calling...

 

“ _...CLINT!”_

Clint started into the present.

Logan and Jessica and Natasha were staring at him, and judging from the looks on their faces, they had been calling him for way too long. Logan looked even less impressed than usual, Natasha coldly displeased and Jessica mainly exasperated.

His shoulders dropped a little. He swallowed thickly and it tasted bitter. 'Cause yeah, he was letting them down again, wasn't he? To borrow Logan's words, he wasn't exactly the best recruit. Spacing-out egoistic dude with a Paleolithic weapon he couldn't even use properly anymore. Our goddamn hero.

But he was trapped on this plane with them, and it had only been _one fucking day,_ so Natasha wasn't going to say it out loud yet. And he was so pathetically grateful for it he wanted to kick his own ass.

“I'm—I'm sorry,” he said. Then he added lamely, “I spaced out.” _No shit._ “What... what were you saying?”

 Natasha's expression was now bland and undecipherable.

“I was saying,” she said, “that I hope you're not bored of Europe yet, because we're going back to Ukraine. Our next recruit just popped up.”

“Ukraine?” Clint asked, turning back towards the screen and adding automatically, “I thought we were going to pick up Cap in...”

 

 _BRUCE BANNER,_ said the screen in glowing, pulsing letters.

 

“Cap’s already on the team,” Natasha said dryly. “Seems like Hulk is next.”

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading; please, tell me what you thought? :)


	5. Freak Show

 

 

 

 

 

 

Someone knocked on his door in the middle of the night. Clint wasn't asleep.

Of _course_ he wasn't asleep.

They had found Bruce. They had found _Bruce._ He was going to see him again, for the first time since Christmas, and the mere possibility of it made him too breathless, too terrified and too desperately hopeful to entertain the idea of rest.

He opened the door; everything was dark outside, but the silhouette waiting for him was familiar enough.

“Come on,” Natasha said dryly.

He squinted. She was in training gear, which raised close to no enthusiasm on his part.

 “Nat...” he said. “I already got my ass kicked today.”

She stared at him unmovingly. He sighed, then gave up and walked out the door. He wasn't kidding; Logan had really beaten the hell out of him, and he was covered in heavy bruises. He was lucky he hadn’t broken his hand punching him.

“Why _did_ you two fight?” Natasha asked briskly as they went down the spiraling stairs.

“I—he—Nat, who's flying the plane?”

“Jessica. And we've got a pretty efficient automatic pilot, thank you. Now answer the damn question.”

They got to the bottom of the stairs. Clint knew her—knew her pretty well, actually. She would get her answer no matter what; he might as well just tell her now.

“He was mad at me about the Barton Act.”

“Understandable,” she said dryly.

He shrank a little. Obviously, everyone here had already done a lot of the thinking he’d done since he’d been extracted from Moscow.

She turned to him, and her eyes caught a dim glint in the darkness. “So he just attacked you?” she asked calmly, almost off-handedly. “You had no choice but to defend yourself. Is that right?”

She didn't sound murderous or concerned or even all that interested. She sounded like a headmistress trying to get a little kid to admit that no, the dog hadn't _really_ eaten his homework. There was no need to be a genius to know that Logan, for all his lack of table manners, was the kind of guy to pick on people his own size.

“Not exactly,” Clint admitted. “I... I let him. I asked him.”

Natasha looked calmer than ever in her repressed anger. “Clint—exactly what the _hell_ is wrong with you?” she asked. “We're only four people on this team and you've already turned half of them against you. Was the rest of the world not enough?”

“I—”

“We'll get to Ukraine in four hours,” she cut off. “Now tell me why I shouldn't be leaving you to guard the jet while we all go looking for Banner.”

Panic bleached out Clint's brain for a moment. “Nat—no—please,” he suffocated, trying not to let his terror show. “I'm... it's temporary. I'll get over it. Just give me a chance.”

“I'll give you a chance,” she said calmly.

Clint's frenzy was cut off short. He blinked at her.

“Because you gave me one, once,” she went on. “Because I remember a man with whom I completed _hundreds_ of impossible ops without a glitch.”

She jabbed her finger in his chest. “That man was Hawkeye, and I want him _back.”_

“I can—I can bring him back,” Clint said hurriedly. “I...”

He thought about Bruce—just seeing him again, just knowing he was alive. It might happen. It simply might _happen,_ and that thought illuminated the hollow darkness that lived inside him; and suddenly he was himself again, only he was struggling to stay this way, only he was desperately clinging to that shining moment of insane hope, like a drowning man flailing in dark water.

“I don't know what your fucking problem is, but you need to put that aside,” she said. “Secret Avengers mean Avengers all the same. You don't get to falter. You don't get to give up. Are you bitching about losing the Avengers Tower? About SHIELD's resources? We're four people on a plane and that's already a lot more than we could ask for. Get used to it.”

“I know—God, that's not at all what I—”

“There's no room here for quitters. You and I did missions with no extraction and with gear that amounted to _jack shit._ So don't you pull that doubtful crap you pulled with Xavier _ever_ again.”

“Alright,” Clint said. “Alright! I’m sorry. You’re right.”

She was right. He knew she was right about everything. He had to man up. Shit, it wasn't like he wasn't _used_ to losing everything. Besides, he still had his apartment in Brooklyn. He still had a place among the mightiest team on Earth. He still had hope, and he still had his bow, and he had eaten and showered within the last twenty-four hours. He hadn’t lost _everything._

But then why was it so difficult?

“I'll try,” he promised. “I'll—I’ll do my best.”

They stared at each other for a while, and he wished her poker face wasn't so good while he was still so openly desperate.

“So,” he said awkwardly. “Do we, like... symbolically spar and all, now?”

She shook her head. “We're suiting up in four hours and you haven't slept. Besides, like you said, you _already_ got your ass kicked.”

He smiled, very faintly. She sighed a little, but it was a more indulgent sigh. “Clint,” she said. “Get your head back in the game. I don't care what it takes.”

“I'll make it happen,” he murmured.

She gave him another piercing look and he almost thought she was going to ask him now _why_ he was crumbling to pieces in the first place. But she didn't—maybe she assumed it was out of sheer guilt; not that she was entirely wrong—and he was so stupidly grateful for it that he felt suddenly tired, not in mind, but in body, for the first time since he had gotten on the plane.

He would go, and rest, and stop his goddamn brooding, and do everything he could to be useful in the morning. He could make it happen—if he stopped thinking about himself and his problems for a single minute, he could make it happen.

 

*

 

He managed to sleep for a few hours, but a single knock on the door was enough to jolt him awake as though he had been wired to a car battery.

He slipped on the black, nondescript battle gear he'd found in the plane's armory; and as he zipped up his tactical jacket, he felt almost good. Action was always something of a soothing place for him, now more than ever. It had been like this in the circus; he felt sick with stage fright in the wings, but once he was in the spotlight, he just did his thing with a noiseless mind.         

He slung his bow on his shoulder and was forced to admit that despite the fact that everything changed, nothing ever really changed.

 

“Clint,” Jessica saluted him a bit absently when he got into the cabin, without looking at him.

Natasha had buckled up in the copilot seat and Logan was leaning against the wall. Clint grabbed the back of Natasha's seat and leaned forward to peer through the windshield. They were about to land in a huge, dark field.

“What did Xavier tell us exactly?” Clint asked tentatively.

“Briefing later,” Natasha snapped back.

The rebuttal made him shrink and he hated himself for it.

“Brace yourselves,” Jessica warned.

The plane touched down as smoothly as one could hope on a bumpy patch of uncultured land, but she handled it like it was nothing. The Bus, as Ward had called it, was extremely quiet and its lights hadn't been turned on for the landing—perks of having a pilot who could see in the dark—which meant they could reasonably hope no one had seen them coming. Not to mention there was absolutely no one to see or hear them anyway.

Natasha and Jessica unbuckled, and Logan and Clint followed them to the cargo area at the other end of the plane. Clint became aware he was nervously fidgeting with the command of his quiver, and stopped at once. They all climbed into the Quinjet; Jessica buckled herself into in the pilot seat, and the belly of the plane opened to spit them out in the night.

“Okay,” Natasha said, loading her gun. “Target is an ordinary clinic relocated in the country. Obviously, not a lot of nosy neighbors.”

“Does match Banner's criteria,” Logan said.

“But here's the thing. According to Xavier's informant, the hospital is mostly for the elderly and tends to lose patients, except for the occasional kid falling off a tree.”

“And?”

“And _that_ doesn't add up,” Clint murmured.

They all glanced at him and he explained a bit too quickly, “He'd go to a place where he can help a lot of people no one else could help.”

“Such as an irradiated zone or a contaminated area,” Jessica nodded.

Clint's relief at her including him in the conversation was definitely over the top, and he did his best to suppress it and _focus._

“Maybe he gave that up,” Logan growled. “Maybe he just wanted find a quiet place to lay low.”

“Guess we can just ask him when he get him,” Natasha said, powering her Widow's Bites with a whirr.

The Quinjet landed smoothly half a mile away from a white, square building which seemed too massive in comparison with the town it almost overshadowed. It gleamed under the moon like a tomb of old. Only a few windows were lit up.

Natasha was about to get up from her crouch when Logan spoke again. “Where are we going to put him?”

She looked up at him, frowning. “What?”

 _“Banner,”_ Logan growled. “In case you forgot, we only got one plane.”

“There is the interrogation room,” she said calmly.

Clint froze.

“The walls are made of a silicon carbide-coated vibranium alloy,” she went on. “Besides—”

“That's never gonna hold him in,” Logan cut off.

 _"Besides,”_ she repeated coldly, “the plan isn't to take him with us.”

“What?” Clint blurted.

They all looked at him again and he kinda wished they would stop doing that.

“We want him on the team—not on the plane,” Jessica explained as though it was obvious. “Logan's right. We can't afford to carry a bomb around.”

“So what, we—we just walk in and... give him his Secret Avengers membership card?”

“Basically,” Natasha said. “Before someone else invites him to a different party.”

She got up. “Grab a gun and lose the bow. You're coming with me.”

Clint opened his mouth—only the both of them?—then closed it when he realized neither Logan nor Jessica were protesting. They must have talked about this earlier, while he wasn’t listening. And it made sense—they weren't exactly known for being on overly friendly terms with the Hulk, while Clint had been seen teaming up with him to defeat the Sentry.

He swallowed, then unbuckled his quiver and folded his bow; Natasha tossed him a big hoodie which he slipped on over his tight black gear. She put on a suit jacket which magically transformed the armed agent into a smart business woman.

Clint rolled open the door of the Quinjet and climbed out in the Ukrainian night; there was a pleasant smell of spring in the air, and tiny twinkling stars pinned the black velvet of the skies in place. The sparse orange street lights weren't nearly enough to blind it. Natasha got out as well and closed the door behind them. Tucked away in the shadows, the little aircraft was virtually invisible.

“Come on,” she said.

“So we just walk in,” Clint murmured as they reached the small asphalt road.

“It's late in the night; they'll leave us to rot in the emergency room. We can search the place for Banner—maybe ask the patients. Don't trust the medical staff.”

“Yeah, Budapest all over again,” he said.

“You and I remember Budapest very differently,” she grinned.

He realized, all of a sudden, how much he had missed her—missed this.

And maybe he had unconsciously punished himself by chasing winter all over the globe, because now that spring finally crossed his way, he felt a burst of optimism clear out his dark thoughts. Breathing that sweet cool air, he felt almost good. Maybe it _could_ be this simple—maybe he would just sit in the waiting room for a few minutes then look up to see Bruce.

His stomach churned at the thought. At least he wouldn't need to pretend being sick.

An old nurse welcomed them with a yawn and told them to wait for the doctor indeed when they introduced themselves as a worried young couple. Neither Natasha nor Clint spoke Ukrainian, but it was similar enough to Russian and they sat down in the waiting room like the good patients they were.

The room was small, harshly lit, and rather depressing; a few Ukrainians were waiting already—a mother with her baby, an old man staring in space, and a group of strangely subdued teenagers. Clint stared at a potted plant while watching the nurse in the corner of his eye. She was gulping down gallons of coffee.

“At this rate, she's due for a bathroom break in less than fifteen minutes,” he muttered to Natasha.

“Yup. Speaking of which—nature's calling,” she said.

“Man, what a crazy coincidence.”

They had done hundreds of ops like this. Hospital staff and airport staff were the toughest to manipulate; it was simpler to walk around them.

Natasha got up and left; sure enough, a few minutes later, the nurse took her leave as well. Clint got up and walked behind her counter to check her antique computer. None of the other patients apparently gave a damn.

Clint did a quick search for “Banner”—nothing, but that was to be expected. He searched for “Bruce”, “Robert” and “David” and found nothing either, neither among the patients and neither among the staff. Of course, Bruce could have taken a hundred other nicknames...

His fingers suddenly hesitated over the keyboard; then, slowly, he typed,

 

“Wizard.”

Still nothing.

His throat tightened. Had he really thought that it would—but that didn't _mean_ anything. He wasn’t even sure what he'd thought it could mean. He swallowed his stupid disappointment and scrolled through the register, but there were no pictures and no name standing out.

He started opening files at random—lists of supplies, number of rooms, electricity bills, emergency exits. He frowned, then went through the electricity bills again. Then checked the number of rooms.

Natasha got out of the bathroom and walked to Clint to lean against the counter; there was no sign of the nurse.

Clint raised an eyebrow. “Killed her in the toilets, honey?”

“Don't be ridiculous, dear,” she said. “I just threw away all the toilet paper. She'll be there for a while.”

“You really are the most fearsome woman I know.”

“Found anything?”

“Maybe,” he murmured. “For some reason, this hospital has been eating a little bit too much of energy. It’s almost as though there’s a hidden level.”

They stared at each other.

“I think you can stop looking for him in the official lists,” Natasha murmured.

Clint closed the window and got up; they slipped into a corridor just as the nurse finally came out of the bathroom.

The hallways were dark and pretty gloomy.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” Clint hissed as they strode to the stairs. “This place is crap. Not _cover_ crap, but _actual_ crap. No cameras. No guards.”

“And the hidden level isn’t all that hidden,” Natasha murmured.

Clint was speechless. Sure, there had been no basement on the plan, but the door leading to the basement was obvious enough. It was painted in _red._ At least it was locked, but Clint was still starting to get a very bad feeling.

Natasha raised a hand to her earpiece. “Widow to Wolverine.”

There was a very tense beat; then Clint heard the sizzle of Logan’s voice. “I don’t know,” Natasha answered. “It looks like a trap. Give us fifteen minutes and prepare for an emergency take-off.”

Clint had already gotten to work on the door. His carnie years didn’t fail him, not to mention the lock was insultingly easy.

“I don’t like this,” he murmured.

Natasha only got out her gun, then walked inside; and he followed.

 

*

 

The stairs and walls were damp, grey concrete—and, really? Concrete? Like that could stop the Hulk.

Maybe the walls weren’t what held the Hulk in.

Clint swallowed and picked another theory—maybe this was just Bruce’s hiding place. Yeah. He liked that theory—a lot better. Even though the thought of Bruce living alone in this grim, desolated basement made the ache in his chest even sharper. At least it was warm—almost too warm.

They stumbled upon a row of eight doors and Natasha stopped them to call Logan again. “Still nothing,” she murmured.

The echo made it sound as though she’d shouted at the top of her lungs.

“Another fifteen minutes.”

Clint looked at the steel doors lining up against the concrete walls and tried very hard not to think about death row prisons.

The doors weren’t even _locked._ Natasha pushed the first one open and braced herself; no attack came. The pale circle of her flashlight revealed nothing but a sad empty room, a bit of old hospital supplies. A broken bed, a few boxes. Two dusty computers.

Doors two to four proved just as anticlimactic, filled with nothing but junk. Doors five to seven opened on completely empty rooms.

Then they got to the eighth one.

They exchanged a glance in the dark; Clint cocked his gun and braced himself. Natasha nodded, then turned around and banged the door open.

 

It was empty.

           

Clint waited for a few seconds, then let his back muscles relax and lowered his gun. Natasha searched the room for a moment, but there was truly nothing—not even the random supplies of the first rooms. Plain old nothing.

“False lead,” she murmured.

Clint brutally turned away, trying to walk off his frustration. Fuck, this wasn’t _possible._ This was Xavier’s intel. And Clint was sick to death of _false leads_ —his last months had been nothing but that, false leads, useless hopes, and he couldn’t have this happening again, he had to find something—something— _anything!_

Natasha was whispering something to Logan but Clint couldn’t hear it. He went through all the rooms again, from the eighth to the first, swiping the beam of light over the bare walls, opening the boxes, even trying to turn on the computer—fucking _useless,_ there was nothing, there was nothing at all. He was standing in the first room with this stupid bed and those stupid supplies and they had come all the way to this hellhole for _nothing._

He turned off his flashlight—he was tired of being Hawkeye if there was nothing to see. He wanted darkness, complete darkness so he could at least grab his own hair and grit his teeth and take a second to scowl and force it all back down inside himself. Just a moment to freak out properly on his own.

But it wasn’t dark.

He slowly opened his eyes, still reeling. It wasn’t dark. A faint grey glow oozed from under the bed.

Clint turned on his flashlight again, then crouched down to grab the thing. It was—a plastic bottle, filled with something which evidently wasn’t water. It was some kind of chemical phosphorescent stuff. There wasn’t much light here, but Natasha’s flashlight had been enough to provoke a faint reaction. Clint was impressed—he’d worn a glow-in-the-dark suit in the circus and it took an entire day in the sun to be of any use. This homemade lamp was quality stuff. Quality chemistry, MacGyver style.

Looked familiar.

Clint took a shaky breath, not daring to hope; holding the bottle, he straightened up and saw Natasha’s silhouette in the doorframe. “Hey,” he said. “I think… I think maybe Banner _was_ here.”

She walked inside, frowning. He handed her the bottle and she studied it for a minute.

“That’s very weak evidence,” she said eventually.

She hesitated, then went on, “Let’s bring this back and check it for fingerprints. Maybe Banner’s will come up. Or Ross’s, who knows.”

 _Ross._ That name was in Bruce’s goodbye letter. “Who’s that?” Clint asked.

Natasha looked up at him, rather blandly.

“General Thaddeus Ross,” she said. “The man who caused the Hulk incident.”

Something twitched in Clint’s memory; of course, he had read Bruce’s files, but it was a very long time ago since he had been—well— _otherwise busy_ during the first assembly of the Avengers. Natasha had been sent to bring in Banner, though; she probably knew his file by heart.

“Ross pushed Banner to proceed with the gamma experiment even though the prototype of the serum wasn’t ready.”

“And… why would he do that?”

“No reason,” Natasha said placidly. “But on a completely unrelated note, Banner was sleeping with Ross’s daughter.”

Oh—yeah. Clint remembered now. Betty Ross, and the general, the incident at Culver University. Right.

He nodded, somehow jerkily. “Alright,” he said in a hoarse voice, looking away from her. “We should probably…”

But then he saw something white faintly standing out against the dark door. It was a sheet of paper. Taped to the steel. They had been so concerned with what was inside the room that they hadn’t seen it.

“The hell is that?”

Natasha tucked the bottle under her arm and ripped off the paper to train her flashlight on it. Something unreadable flickered through her gaze.

Clint walked to her, heart pounding, and she showed him the paper.

“Is this Banner’s writing?”

Clint stared at the words for a good two minutes.

“No,” he managed eventually. “It’s not.”

On the paper was written, in bold, angular letters,

 

_Do not feed the Hulk._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading and commenting!


	6. Anything but you

 

 

 

 

Clint was practicing.

He had been practicing for two hours, and he would probably practice for two hours more, because right now, it was the only thing able to keep him remotely sane.

He had neglected his bow for too long; it felt like it was making him pay for it. He was shooting arrows like a drug addict diving head-first into relapse. Every bull’s eye just made his fingers itch for more, and it still couldn’t, _couldn’t_ silence the thoughts running endlessly through his head.

_Do not feed the Hulk._

If Bruce had written it—if Bruce had written it, it could have been okay. Almost okay. Like a mantra to remind himself not to give in to the anger, or some shit. But Clint had nicked his sharp eyes on Bruce’s letter often enough, rereading it again and again and _again_ until he had to throw it away because it was literally falling to pieces. He was certain that this wasn’t his handwriting.

Empty quiver. He walked to the target and ripped out the arrows with brisk moves. And he was still _thinking._

_Do not feed the Hulk._

Bruce had been right _there—_

Clint had to stop and take a deep breath.

—Bruce had been right there,and now he was gone. Probably long gone. Clint remembered the crappy bed. He remembered the musky smell, he remembered the windowless room, and he remembered the weak glow of the bottle. Clint didn’t want to do the math. He didn’t even want to try.

Full quiver. He walked back to the other end of the room and started shooting even though his target was now mostly composed of holes.

Bruce had been there and he had been hidden. Not hiding; _hidden,_ by people warning other people not to feed him. The paper wasn’t there to taunt him—this wasn’t cruelty, otherwise it would have been on the _other_ side of the door, on the inside, the side he could see. This was a brisk note like scientists leave to other scientists in the lab— _do not heat up the petri dishes_ type thing, and somehow it made it even worse.

And there were the walls. The concrete walls.

Clint shot another arrow. Fucking concrete.

 _Another arrow._ As if the big guy couldn’t tear through concrete like it was soaked cardboard.

 _Another arrow._ Bruce had been kept in this room, for who knew how long, in this crap hospital with close to no security measures.           

 _Another arrow._ And he hadn’t escaped.

 _Another arrow._ And the question was— _why?_

Clint reached behind him but his quiver was empty again; he closed his fist and tightened it. Shivers went up his stiff muscles all the way to his neck and he briskly shook his head, trying to chase away a sound, or an image, or a thought.

 “Wow,” someone said behind him.

He turned see Jessica half-way down the spiraling stairs. She raised her eyebrows at him.

Clint just walked to his target to collect his arrows again.

“Any leads?” he asked through clenched teeth.

Hell, maybe they weren’t going to focus on that anymore. Why would they? They had no reason to pursue the doctor at all costs. They had little time, efforts, and money to waste over it.

“Banner’s fingerprints were on the bottle,” she said.

Clint closed his eyes and nodded. “Good,” he managed. “That’s. Okay. We still after him?”

“Of course. Can’t afford to let him fall into anyone else’s hands.” She tilted her head. “Ever heard of Thaddeus Ross?”

Clint took a deep breath. “His name sure comes up a lot lately.”He kept ripping out the arrows, one by one. “What’s the plan now? We don’t even know where to look.”

“Stark just hacked into SHIELD’s surveillance network,” Jessica said. “He’s searching the globe for Banner—or Ross—but the connection won’t last more than four or five hours.”

“Thought Fury was on our side?”

“Not officially. He’s playing a very dangerous game with the WSC—”

“Yeah, yeah, alright. _Secret_ Avengers.” Clint rammed his last arrow into his quiver. “Four hours of surveillance won’t give us shit. I don’t think any of them will just happen to walk in front of a surveillance camera.”

“Hey,” she said softly. “We’re going to find him eventually.”

Her tone was weirdly _gentle—_ and that was when it occurred to Clint that he had done an increasingly poor job of hiding his interest in Banner.

He slowly looked up at Jessica. She smiled back at him.

Oh.

No, she was like Natasha. She thought he felt guilty. She thought he needed to prove himself. And just like Natasha, she wasn’t wrong, not really, but—thing was, Clint was _used_ to that kind of situation. He’d always felt like this, somehow, though it had gotten a lot worse since his latest fuck-up. It wasn’t the problem. But he would rather let them believe it for the time being. He didn’t want them to find out how selfish, how petty, how ludicrous his real concern was.

“Wanna spar?” he asked.

Jessica’s face split into a grin and Clint remembered how beautiful she was. “Sure. I’ve got five minutes.”

She climbed down the handrail like a spider and Clint wrinkled his nose as she got onto the mat they’d installed in a corner of the cargo area. “Hey, no powers.”

“Then drop your bow.”

He snorted incredulously at that, but unbuckled his quiver all the same. Jessica walked in front of him and shifted her feet into a fighting stance; there was a pause.

She jabbed at him and he instantly went for the plexus—Jessica was flexible and fast and she had a fucking sixth sense so, yeah, it was no use even trying, but he tried anyway. He gave her no chance to think, just kicked and punched and used every dirty trick he knew because he had spent two hours shooting and it wasn’t _enough_ —she fought well, not like Natasha and not like Logan, and he knew the way she moved, he wasn’t actually too far behind here—but suddenly one of his blows landed _hard_ and jerked her head to the side.

“Shit!” Clint said, retreating fast. “Shit, sorry, I—”

“Whoa,” she muttered, rubbing her jaw. “Need to let off steam, much?”

“I’m sorry,” he repeated in a small voice.

“No, no, it’s okay.”

He blinked. She was grinning.

“You asked for it, Barton.”

Clint didn’t even see it coming—the whole cargo area seemed to do a full circle around him and next thing he knew, he was on his back on the mat with Jessica’s hands planted on each side of his head.

“There,” she said. “I win.”

He huffed a breathless laugh. She smiled at him right back, and they just ended up laughing a little nervously, but still it felt good.

 

Then she leaned in and kissed him.

 

He froze for a few seconds. Instinctively, he parted his lips; she pushed softly against him, and he returned the kiss. She felt… she felt _familiar._ Warm. She felt...

“No—no,” he mumbled, suddenly turning his head away.

She straightened up in surprise; he gently pushed her off his body and got up. “I can’t,” he said. “I’m sorry. I can’t.”

He wanted to run away, but there was only one way out—the spiraling stairs at the other end of the cargo area. For a second, he considered opening the belly of the Bus and just jumping out, because he could _really_ use a hasty exit right now. But he couldn’t do that, and he couldn’t decently make a run for the stairs, either.

“Look—” he began uncomfortably. “It’s not that I don’t…”

“No, it’s okay,” she said in a very cold, very polite tone as she got up. “You’ve made yourself clear.”

“Jessica…”

“It’s fine,” she said briskly. “See you later.”

She walked away very calmly and got up the spiraling stairs before vanishing from sight. There—that was how it was done.

Clint sighed and screwed his eyes shut.

_Outdoing yourself, Barton._

*

 

Someone knocked on his door.

“Hey, Barton. You’re up.”

It was Logan.

“Go away,” Clint muttered, swiping through the files on the tablet he’d taken from the command room. “M’ not in the mood to fight.”

“A punching bag’s a bigger challenge than you. Get out of your hole, we’ve got Stark on the line.”

Clint clenched his jaw, then swiped Bruce’s files out of the screen. It was not much, only what he hadn’t had the chance to read during the Avengers Initiative, but at least he was a little more up to date. He was somehow relieved to be distracted from his reading; not that it was especially painful—on the contrary; he kept looking for clues of the Bruce he knew, the way he smiled and breathed and moved, only to come up against the cold blandness of the facts.

He rolled on his side, then got up and opened the door. He was still barefoot and wearing his saggy training t-shirt; while Logan wasn’t exactly _neat,_ he looked like he was holding it together a lot better. Hell, everyone did.

Clint tried to walk past him but Logan grabbed his shoulder.

“Hey.”

He pushed Clint back a little. “How did you say you met that kid? Wagner?”

That was unexpected. Clint blinked at him for a second.

Then he brushed his hand off. “Germany. Drugged in a barn, I just got him out. Why?”

Logan squinted at him for an increasingly awkward amount of time.

“Jesus, Barton,” he said eventually between his teeth. “You really _are_ a good Samaritan, aren’t you?”

“Fuck off,” Clint mumbled, shouldering past him.

He walked to the command room—barefoot, he’d really missed being barefoot—and saw with relief that Jessica was nowhere to be seen; she was probably busy flying the plane and staying away from him. Natasha was leaning against the command table, looking like she was fighting a huge headache, or praying for patience, or both.

 _“Hey, if it isn’t the Amazing Hawkeye,”_ a very distorted voice exclaimed. _“Thought you were worm food by now, buddy.”_

Tony’s blurry image was jumping on the screen and giving Clint his trademark shit-eating grin. Natasha’s fingers were tapping on the table along a pattern which called for murder.

“Word is you’re not exactly being cautious yourself, Stark,” Clint said.

 _"What, me? Pfft. All I did was threaten an international terrorist; what’s the worst that can happen? That’s got nothing on_ you, _my friend. Ever thought of changing your name to_ Apocalypse _or something?”_

Only Tony would laugh about this nightmarish situation; then again, only Tony was safe in his high-security tower, wasn’t he? He wasn’t an outcast—no more than usual. His life hadn’t changed all that much.

Yet Clint couldn’t find it in him to resent him, and a small smile stretched his lips as he shook his head. “Yeah, I’ll consider it.”

“Stark,” Natasha said briskly. “We might be cut off at any time—”

_"Oh, no, this connection might look like crap and sound like it too, but it’s solid—we got plenty of room for banter, sarcasm, irony, jesting, got any more synonyms?”_

“Stark,” repeated Natasha, but Tony was already going on. _“Steve’s not with you?”_

“He’s got troubles of his own right now.”

_“Yeah, but seeing as we’re in a crisis—”_

“You don’t want him to stop dealing with his troubles.”

Tony winced a little. _“…But he’s okay, though. I mean, as far as an undead 90-year-old can…”_ He stopped and licked his lips. _“He is, right?”_ he said, in a more subdued voice.

Clint then realized he’d been wrong again. Vastly wrong.

Tony was terribly, _atrociously_ anxious and tried to cover it under spades and spades of mindless rambling. He was—had always been—the most exposed of all superheroes; and now he was sitting in his tower, a privileged man watching all his friends fall.

“He’s mainly okay,” Natasha answered. “Did you hack SHIELD or not?”

 _"Yes—yes, of course I did,”_ Tony said, catching himself. _“Fury kicked me out in record time, though. I don’t know if it was because the WSC was watching over his shoulder, or because they helped him do it.”_

Natasha pinched her lips, but shook her head. “No. Fury would never work with the WSC behind our backs.”

Tony didn’t look overly convinced and frankly, Clint agreed with him on that one. _“Yeah, well, that’s like, your opinion, Romanov. Anyway, I’m building my own untraceable satellite for the Secret Avengers’ personal use, just in case. It’ll be up in less than a week.”_

Natasha exhaled. “That’s great news. Thank you.”

 _“Yeah, well.”_ Tony waved his hand. _“Look, I can’t stay much longer. So do you want your footage or not?”_

Clint frowned. “Footage?”

_“Wasn’t that the reason for me entering the lion’s den—well, more like the kitty’s den—in the first place? Gotta warn you, though. It’s pin-pointed, reliable coordinates and all, but it’s very weird. Like, freakishly weird. It’s the weirdest thing I ever got on tape. And let me tell you I got pretty fucked-up things on tape, up to and including my own ransom demand—”_

“Tony—wait—you _found_ something?” Clint said, barely breathing.

He’d assumed—Tony had said nothing so he’d assumed—

Tony looked a little taken aback now. His image jumped again and almost blacked away; despite his reassurances, the connection was weakening.

 _“Well, yeah,”_ he said in a voice full of static but still clearly puzzled. _“It’s not like he’s hiding.”_

“What?” Natasha said. “What the hell are you talking about?”

 _"Look, I really must—yeah, Jarvis, I_ know _—here! Sent. Gotta go.”_

Tony’s image vanished; a tiny icon started blinking at the bottom of the screen. It was called _BANNER_CAM013ZS_ROSS._

Clint felt like his lungs had filled with molten lead.

“Open it,” he breathed.

She didn’t move.

“Just fucking open it!”

The video opened up on the wide screen. It was nothing like Clint expected. It was a surveillance camera from the outside of a bank in…

…Zurich?

 _“Zurich?”_ Clint said, almost indignant. “I—but that’s where I was! When I first…”

He brutally shut himself up, but Natasha kept frowning—thankfully, not at him. “It makes no sense,” she said. “Banner should be avoiding Western Europe like the plague.”

“Well—maybe it’s because of the Swiss neutrality...”

“Don’t think Ross cares much about neutrality,” she said.

Fuck, right, Ross. Clint’s sharp eyes darted across the screen, but he couldn’t see anything—neither Ross nor Bruce, only people coming out of a fast-food restaurant facing the bank.

“They got fast-foods in Switzerland?” Clint muttered nervously.

Still nothing. The video was only three minutes long. People kept going in and out the revolving doors of the restaurant, walking away with brown paper bags full of French fries and tiny hamburgers. A guy stopped in the middle of the sidewalk.

It wasn’t Bruce.

It wasn’t Bruce, but he looked a little like him. Same hair color, same general features. He stayed there for a minute, then walked away. The video was past its middle.

Clint’s heart sank in his chest.

It was another false lead. Just like Germany, just like Ukraine, another dead end.

“The facial recognition fucked up,” he said.

“I don’t think—” Natasha began—and then Bruce walked into the frame.

This time, it was Bruce. It was him, without a single doubt. Bruce Banner standing in the middle of the street in fucking _Zurich._

“Jessica?” Natasha said in her com piece. “Let’s take this Bus to Switzerland.”

Clint’s stomach heaved a little when the plane banked until it faced the setting sun. He kept staring at the video. Bruce had stopped on the extreme right edge of the frame, like an actor paralyzed by stage fright. Clint wanted to see the look in his eyes, but the quality wasn’t good enough; he could recognize him, but he couldn’t tell if he looked tired, or haunted, or scared. He had no bag—this was weird; Clint had always pictured him with a backpack—but he was still hunching a little on himself, almost disappearing into a big ugly grey jacket, as unassuming and weary as when he’d first knocked on Clint’s door.

Clint wanted to hug him. He would have sold his fucking soul to break through the screen. The pull he had felt all that time when Bruce was near, this weird and somehow desperate urge to breathe him in, to always maintain physical contact, to always have him _close_ , as close as possible—it was back with full force, so strong it hurt.

 _I’m coming for you,_ he thought, in feverish hope. _Bruce, I’m coming for you._

“That’s strange,” Natasha said in a low voice. “Why is he just standing there?”

Clint hesitated, then suddenly startled. “There’s why.”

“What?”

“There was a hand—there’s someone out of frame right next to him!”

Clint’s inner turmoil suddenly focused into sharp, icy fear. He stared with baited breath. Only a few seconds left.

On the screen, Bruce glanced up from the ground to look at the person on his left. The hand came back—and took his.

It was Ross.

 

To be more precise, it was _Betty_ Ross.

 

She leaned into the frame and gave Bruce a light kiss; they lingered for a second after they parted, foreheads almost touching as she murmured something to him.

Then, still holding his hand, she turned away to walk out of the picture; and he left with her, and the video ended.

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not even sorry


	7. The other guy

 

 

 

 

 

Clint was standing very still.

Around him was only the pressurized hum of the plane.

 

“Well, seems like he found some friends,” Natasha sighed, unimpressed as always. “Might make it easier to get in touch with him.”

“I got Rogers,” Logan said, entering the room. “He’s meeting us in Zurich.”l

“Good.” She raised her fingers to her com piece. ‘Jessica? Flying schedule?”

“ _We’ll get to Switzerland in the morning. Officially, we’re a cargo-plane; hope it’ll do.”_

“A lot of unofficial crap gets past the Swiss radar already. We’ll blend in just fine.”

“ _You should get Tony to hack the video feed of that bank.”_

“Calling Xavier first to keep him updated; then I’m on it.”

“Video feed?” Logan asked as she sent the call. “I can track Banner’s scent from the bank.”

“Yes, but if he comes back in the fast-food, it’ll be safer to meet with him there. Some place neutral, some place he knows. Besides—ah. Professor? Hello?”

“Agent Romanov,” Xavier said as the screen blinked on. “I trust you have some news?”

“I do. We have located Banner.”

“Ukraine?”

“No, it was a false lead. He is currently in Zurich with Elizabeth Ross.”

“I see—oh; good evening, Logan.” Xavier gave him a slight nod. “Agent Barton.”

There was a pause.

Natasha glanced up. “Clint?”

 

“Yes,” Clint said in a voice which sounded wrong. “Hi. Sorry.”

He turned away and almost ran out of the room.

 

*

 

The corridor was dark and empty. Clint took a few steps, then wavered so dangerously he had to lean against the wall.

He began to laugh.

Covering his face with his hands, he let himself slide down the wall to sit on the ground, and kept laughing, a repressed, silent laugh which made his whole body shake. Because seriously, it was hilarious that he should get himself in such a state because of such a trivial thing. Why was he even crying? There was no logical reason. Besides, he wasn’t _crying_ —laughing, he was _laughing,_ because there was simply nothing to be upset about, it would have been ridiculous to be upset over _this,_ and yet he was still breaking down, and wasn’t that horribly funny?

God, but he was _awful!_ He’d never known how self-centered he was before he saw this video. Bruce was not in captivity—he was in a wealthy country with the woman he loved, and there Clint was, _whining._ No—laughing. He laughed so much he had to wipe off tears. He was disgusted with himself. What, would he have rather had Bruce imprisoned and suffering, so Clint could rescue him and pretend to be a hero? Seriously. _Seriously._

He had to get up now. He couldn’t stay on the floor, could he? He had to be reasonable. Stop this pathetic bullshit. Who sat on the floor and just laughed? No one. He had to get up. He didn’t want to be here anymore. He didn’t want to be anywhere anymore. He was so tired of laughing.

_Are you listening to yourself? Goddamn dummy. Get up._

He got up and almost slid down again.

Fuck, he was a mess. He’d better go back to his room and lock the door, or his teammates might see him and realize something was wrong with him. _What the fuck is wrong with you?_ What the fuck is wrong with me, Clint thought, still laughing as he wobbled to his room. What the fuck is wrong with me.

 

*

 

Clint recognized nothing of Zurich.

 

They had parked the Bus in a discreet spot outside town thanks to Natasha’s alarmingly extended network, and were now on an actual bus to reach the bank. Great, white buildings with brown-red roofs passed by outside the windows.

Clint watched with dead eyes, blinking slowly. He had no real memory of how he’d gotten here. He had no idea whether people had talked to him, or at which point he’d changed his clothes. Did he even have his bow with him? He shifted on his seat and felt his bag dig into his side. Yes, bow and quiver. He repeated these words in his head until they lost their meaning. Bow and quiver. The dull hum of the bus and the particular smell of the seats were making him numb again. He looked around. Natasha was there, right in front of him, talking in a low voice to Jessica. It was weird she hadn’t called him out about earlier. Maybe she had and he didn’t remember. Logan had taken a solitary seat by the window and chewed an unlit cigar.

Had Clint really been in this city six months ago? He rubbed his eyes—ended up rubbing them for a lot longer than what he first intended—but when he blinked them open again, everything was still the same. Soulless.

The worst part was that he was still desperate to see Bruce. It made him feel terribly, cruelly ashamed, like a kid who got overexcited and got nothing but unimpressed stares in return. A nice bullshit castle in the air he’d built for himself, really. What was he fucking _thinking?_ Shit, Bruce had stayed in Brooklyn because he’d just needed a place to rest and lick his wounds—just a bit of _calm—_ and even there, he’d gotten himself a millstone in the form of a smitten hitman with a bicep for a brain.

No, this was pathetic, so pathetic Clint almost started laughing again. He could see, now, how deeply he’d fooled himself. All that shit, the world crumbling apart, heroes struggling to keep it together, and Clint still had the mentality of a wide-eyed fourth grader. Either he had expected Bruce to wait for him, which was ridiculous, or he just hadn’t imagined _other_ people might care about him, which was despicable. He wanted to bury himself in a hole. But he couldn’t, because Bruce was nearby, and no matter how lame and petty Clint felt, the ache in his chest was still stronger, and he wanted, he needed, he wanted to _see_ him.

Appalling.

Natasha got up and Clint vaguely followed her, stumbling as he climbed down on the neat sidewalk. He had to get it together. Get it together. The bus doors closed behind them with a _pshh,_ and it rolled away.

“It’s not very far,” Natasha said. “Let’s go.”

Clint followed her to a generic hotel a block away. He wasn’t sure why they were going there, but he didn’t ask, in case they’d already said it and he hadn’t listened. They went into the hall and climbed up the carpeted stairs which muffled their steps.

“Room 407,” Natasha said.

She knocked—it sounded like code—and the door opened.

“Natasha,” said a voice Clint thought he would never hear again. “Come on in. I only got here two hours ago.”

She got in to shake hands, and Jessica and Logan did the same, and Clint suddenly realized with a gut-wrenching terror that _he didn’t want to be here,_ he didn’t want to see—he didn’t want to _be seen_ like this, but then the blue eyes caught his and he heard, “ _Clint?”_

Clint did his best to smile, but his voice still sounded too weak to his own ears when he said, “Hey, Cap.”

Steve stared at him for a split second, then his shocked features melted in a smile. “Well, that’s the best surprise I’ve had in months.”

Clint really hadn’t deserved that.

“I thought you were dead,” he said, stupidly.

“I was afraid _you_ were,” Steve said as they walked inside the tiny hotel room. “But I shouldn’t have worried. You’re resilient.”

Clint laughed, because it wasn’t funny. “Resilient,” he said. “Sure.”

“Any news on Banner?” Natasha asked, peeking out the window.

“Nothing,” Steve said, turning to her. “But the bank’s feed shows that Betty Ross came here almost every day for a week. She hasn’t showed up yet.”

Clint finally realized that the hotel was just above the bank, meaning they had a direct view on the fast-food restaurant. His stomach twisted. The window frame matched the video frame. Bruce had been right there two days ago. Clint had never been so close—and so far.

“This is a waste of time,” Logan growled. “I could trace his scent, for fuck’s sake.”

“This is about _Banner,”_ Jessica said briskly.

“So?”

“So an incident would be the end of him, and of us,” Natasha said, without turning. “Better take it slow. This isn’t just about your hobby of being mashed into a pulp, Logan.”

“Yeah? Well all I see is you cowering in a hotel room because you’re still scared shitless of him.”

Natasha only looked at him, but a lesser man would have crumbled to pieces. Logan sneered and she straightened her spine.

“Guys,” Steve said quietly. “This is a very small hotel room.”

There was a second of tense silence.

“Logan’s right,” Steve went on, to everyone’s surprise. “We can’t lose Banner’s scent. But Natasha’s right, too; we’re off to a better start if we can keep this on neutral grounds. Let’s wait until dark and if he doesn’t show up, we’ll go after him.”

Logan sniffed a little.

“Ever the perfect leader,” he said, but he uncrossed his arms and Natasha relaxed.

Clint agreed. Steve had not changed a bit. He had not wavered. He had not given in. He’d been dragged into this shit-storm and forced to bear the brunt of it—on TV shows, in press conferences, and eventually on the bloodied steps of the courthouse. Clint had provoked it all out of sheer selfishness, and then ran away to Europe because of the same ridiculous delusions, instead of facing the truth and staying behind to help.

And yet, Steve was still as grudgeless, as brave, and as kind as ever.

Clint used to think Steve Rogers brought out the absolute good in people. He still thought so, to a fault: he didn’t believe anymore there was any good to be brought out of him. He wasn’t sure why he was even still here. He should just leave them to find Banner—they’d manage a lot better without him, actually.

“Betty Ross,” Steve suddenly said.

Everyone straightened up to look out the window.

“With Banner?” Jessica asked.

“Without.”

“I’m going in,” Natasha said. No one protested; she was the most experienced undercover agent of the room, not to mention their unofficial Banner-Ross expert.

She taped a tiny microphone to the collar of her jacket and arranged her hair.

“No earpiece,” Steve said. “She’ll see it.”

Everyone else took one, including Clint; Natasha left the room and they turned them on.

It was weird, in an almost intimate way, to hear Natasha’s soft, measured breath and distant steps as she went down the stairs and out of the hotel. They saw her wait for the green light, then cross the street with a steady gait, before disappearing into the restaurant.

Clint walked away from the window to sit on the bed. He turned the volume to the max, and closed his eyes.

 

The moment she pushed the door open, the sounds swallowed him. There was the incessant chatter, the scraping of plastic forks and spoons, the clatter of trays, the sizzling of grilling meat and cooking oil, the beeping of cell phones, the Swiss radio in the background. The sounds changed as she walked, voices growing stronger, softer, a few French words, a lot of German ones, but a strange, twisted German Clint didn’t recognize. The whole of it wavered in tune with her steps. Someone telling her dryly to get in line.

“ _This is my friend,”_ she said in German to justify herself, before adding softly, in English, “ _Hello, Dr. Ross. Can we talk?”_

A beat. Then:

“ _I don’t remember… Excuse me—do we know each other?”_

Betty Ross’s voice was soft, gentle, and somehow crystalline—although whether it was actual crystal or hard diamond, Clint wasn’t sure.

“ _You’ll want to know me,”_ Natasha said. “ _I am here to talk to you about the Avengers Initiative.”_

A pause. Clint guessed Betty Ross had paled. He suddenly remembered he was in a hotel room with three other people listening to the same conversation; it felt surreal, but he quickly forgot it as it started again.

“ _I do not have much time,”_ Betty Ross said.

Clint frowned. _I do not._ She’d just said, _I don’t remember._ And now this strange, artificial, unjustified _I do not._

Well, she was taken by surprise, obviously. But people in that case would start talking with _less_ attention. Betty Ross had just done the exact opposite. _I do not._

“ _Then let’s make it quick,”_ Natasha said, with a smile in her voice. Her tone was placating, friendly, open, yet strict and decisive. A work of art.

There was a bit of fumbling and Clint supposed they’d sat at a table, or leaned against a counter or something. “ _You’re in contact with Bruce Banner,”_ Natasha began.

Another beat.

“ _Yes.”_

She wasn’t hiding it. That woman was supposed to care about Bruce, and she wasn’t hiding it.

It was logical if she thought they’d been found out. But she was _known_ for her relationship with Dr. Banner. Natasha could have been anyone and just shooting in the dark. Why wasn’t Betty Ross waiting for proof that Natasha did know for sure Bruce was with her? That Natasha really was with the Avengers? Why was she spilling the beans so easily?

“ _We’d like to meet him and make him an offer. We’re willing for it to happen right here, in the open.”_

“ _That is very kind of you,”_ Betty Ross answered soberly.

‘That is’. Not ‘that’s’ _._

Clint was reading too much into this.

But still.

“ _But I am afraid this meeting will not be of much use.”_

‘I am’.

‘Will not’.

Stop it, dummy, moron, idiot, it doesn’t mean a thing.

“ _Why not?”_

“ _You are looking for the Hulk,”_ Betty Ross said, matter-of-factly, “ _but he is not the Hulk anymore.”_

There was a stunned silence.

“ _I’m not sure what you mean,”_ Natasha said with an edge of uncertainty in her voice.

“ _I mean he is on the verge of finding a permanent cure,”_ Betty Ross went on, with a soft smile in her voice.

“No,” Clint breathed.

“ _A cure for the Hulk?”_ Natasha repeated distinctly for the benefit of the team.

“ _Yes. I gave Bruce the results of my father’s research, which proved very useful. The Hulk is resilient, but it can be killed; and we are getting there.”_

“Bullshit!” Clint said.

“No, it’s not unlikely,” Steve frowned. “That’s bad news. I think we just lost Banner.”

“How can—you’re not going to believe that? She called the Hulk _it.”_

“She’d better, since they’re about to flush him down the toilet,” Logan said.

But no. No. Clint remembered Christmas. Clint remembered Bruce’s letter by heart. He had said, _I will keep trying._

Had it just been another of Clint’s delusions? Had Bruce just written this because it sounded good—had he given up about this, too?

“It doesn’t make sense,” Clint insisted stubbornly.

“Maybe she _is_ lying,” Jessica said. “Maybe she just wants to protect Banner. Make us think he’s removed himself from the superhuman equation.”

 _That_ made sense. Except it didn’t. Bruce would simply never do that. He had always tried to keep fighting. He had always been there to help. And he had never tried to hide what he was, not like this. Why couldn’t he serve that bullshit to SHIELD when they were forcing him to endorse his teammates’ crimes for the sake of superhuman law? It could be so easily checked. And one could never hide the Hulk for very long. No—this wasn’t a lie, but then it really made _no sense._

And that measured, unnatural way of speaking…

“Oh fuck,” Clint murmured to himself.

It was so obvious all of a sudden.

“Oh _fuck._ She’s on coms _too.”_

He suddenly got up.

“Clint, where are you—”

He was already out.

 And hurtling down the stairs, and running across the hall and across the street—and he pushed the door and strode inside the restaurant.

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, well. Thoughts, please? :)


	8. Hurt Locker

 

 

 

 

 

 

Strangely enough, the noise was a lot less overwhelming than when Clint had been listening to it through Natasha’s com piece. He spotted them at once, alone at a table in the back of the room. Betty Ross was turning her back to him, but Natasha saw him instantly. Her eyes widened and she paused mid-sentence; Betty Ross took advantage of this slip of her control to push back her chair.

“Well, it was very nice talking to you,” she said in that unnaturally friendly voice.

She turned away and walked not to the exit, but to the bathroom.

Clint was not exactly thinking—more like watching it all happen from a hazy distance. He followed her hurriedly across the busy restaurant.

 _"What. Are. You. Doing?”_ Natasha hissed in his ear.

Clint turned off his earpiece and hurried inside the ladies’ bathroom, which was actually a one-person toilet with a small sink and a little mirror.

Betty Ross was staring at her reflection in the glass. She was really beautiful, very pale and elvish-like with jet-black hair and clear blue eyes. Her full, pink lips were quivering, and she stood very straight under the neon light, as though hypnotized by her own reflection. When she heard the door opening, she startled violently and spun round.

Clint locked the door behind him and stared at her without a word. He checked her ears, wrists, collar with quick glances. No earrings, no cuff links or bracelets, no necklace. Was he wrong? Was he once again completely, pathetically wrong?

“This is the ladies’ room,” she said in English, hesitant and shy.

But as she turned away from the mirror, she flattened her right hand over her stomach, in a very intent gesture—and Clint saw it, underneath the thin blouse.

Wires. An entire coms system under her clothing.

And she hadn’t openly showed him—which meant she was wired against her will; and which also meant they were being watched as well.

Suddenly, like a blow to the face, Clint realized where this was all going. What this all _looked like._ A man and a woman alone in a locked bathroom. He realized what he would have to do if he wanted to remove the coms system and talk to her without her puppet masters suspecting anything.

He was pretty sure he looked even more terrified than her. He forced his lips to smile in a horrendous grimace.         

“I know it’s the ladies’ room,” he said, coming closer. “Aren’t you a lady?”

Betty Ross should have paled even more; she flushed a little instead. Her right hand slipped away from her stomach, and she was decidedly looking away from the mirror. _In the mirror?_ Clint thought frantically, cold sweat trickling down his back. _Cameras in the mirror?_

“Leave me alone,” she said in a trembling voice. “I’ll scream.”

“Yeah?” Clint said, nauseous with his own game but stepping forward anyway, never blow your cover, whatever you do, stick to the part—“That’s my favorite part.”

He closed in, struggling to keep his smirk from turning into a horrified scowl. Betty Ross took a few steps back, shrinking, eyes wide.

She suddenly leaped onto the side and he jumped to catch her arm. She was frail and thin like a doll, and when he shoved her back against the wall, she opened her mouth to scream—but he gagged her with his hand and pressed their bodies together. She writhed, but in a strange way; she was not really trying to push him back, only squirming in his grip, as though to make it _look_ like she was struggling wildly. Clint crushed her against the wooden wall and slipped his hand between their stomachs.

“Mm,” he groaned, like the pig he pretended to be, then hissed—a bit too fast but he couldn’t bear this, he couldn’t do this, he was going to throw up—“ _Hey,_ the fuck is this?”

She gasped, adequately, and he went on, trying to maintain his brutish voice as he frantically looked for the coms system under her blouse, “You’re fucking _wired?_ You trying to trap me? Uh? You little cunt—answer me!” he shouted, slamming the wall near her head.

“Please!” she shrieked as he ripped off the coms system, a nasty thing woven into the fabric so he had to tear off her blouse—oh great, just fucking _great—_ “please!” she kept saying in between gasping, frantic breaths. “Please—help! Help! God, please, help—someone help me!”

Clint got away from her, pulled the wires from the fabric and smashed them under his foot, then threw the remains in the toilet. Betty Ross was cowering in the corner with her eyes screwed shut and almost crying, “Please, God, please, I swear it wasn’t for you, it wasn’t about you, please, please, don’t hurt me…”

Clint flushed the toilet and the bundle of wires disappeared. He realized he was shuddering, and thought he was going to be sick. Betty Ross took a deep breath, keeping her eyes closed. “Is it gone?” she asked in a tiny, wet voice.

“It’s gone,” Clint said, swallowing thickly. “I—I’m so sorry. I’m so fucking sorry—there was no other way to—”

“Are you with that woman?” she went on in a completely changed tone, sharp and decisive.

“I—” he stammered, taken aback. “Yes, I’m…”

“Everything I told her was true, but that’s not all,” she said.

She was still closing her eyes, not screwing them shut but simply keeping her pale lids down, and talking in that steely voice Clint thought belonged only to Natasha, or Jessica when she was pissed off. “My father and Bruce Banner are trying to eliminate the Hulk.”

“Your fa—”

“Let me speak! I had to scream hard enough to be convincing; we don’t have much time.”

It was true; people were shouting in German outside, frantically turning the doorknob and banging on the door.

“Bruce didn’t agree to the experiments,” she went on hurriedly. “He doesn’t want to be cured anymore. He's being forced.”

“What—forced?” Clint stammered, trying to take it all in. “But—how?”

“Through me. My right eye has been replaced by a camera with a kill switch built in.”

Okay, now this was a little too much to take in.

“A cam—a  _kill switch?”_

“Yes, acid—SHIELD knows about this tech,” she said. “If Bruce snaps, the camera does too.”

It was terribly strange to have such a feverish conversation with a woman who kept her lids closed—though it was probably for the best; Clint could have not looked her in the eyes.

“But—but I saw you yesterday, walking together—”

“Yes, my father lets us out,” she said hurriedly. “Why not? Walls aren’t our prison; _I_ am.”

Clint made a tremendous effort to ask the right questions.

“Where—where do you stay? Where does he keep you?”

“Doesn’t matter now that this woman approached me. He moved us so many times already—he’ll move us to a new place as soon as he can get a hold of me.” She flinched and raised her hand to her left eye in an aborted gesture. “He’s sending me a signal. He’s on his way. You have to go.”

“Take this,” Clint said, taking off his earpiece.

“What?” she frowned, and of course, _dummy,_ she couldn’t open her eyes—

“Take this,” he insisted, placing it into her hand. “There’s a tracker inside.”

She gripped tight the tiny sphere of metal. A loud crack made them jump; the door of the bathroom was about to break.

“Okay, I do have to go,” Clint said, stepping back. “But we’ll find you. We’ll—”

“You have to get Bruce out,” she hissed, fingers of steel suddenly digging in his arm.

He felt like she was looking into his eyes even though they would not open. “I don’t care what it takes, I don’t care what happens to me—you have to get Bruce _out_ ,” she said fiercely. “Promise it!”

“I promise,” Clint said.

She stilled.

“I promise you,” Clint repeated feverishly, suddenly clutching at her. “I swear. I will do everything I can to break him out.”

She gripped his arms for another second, pale and shivering, and he realized how desperate she was for this single chance to save the man she loved.

“Good,” she breathed eventually, and she let him go.

Clint jumped to reach the window on top of the wall; he smashed it just as the door was flung down, and squeezed himself through the shards of glass, eliciting indignant cries from the little mob ready to tear him to pieces. He was doing the job for them anyway, shredding long gashes into the skin of his arm as he pushed himself through; he finally fell on the sidewalk at the back of the restaurant and bolted away instantly, heart hammering against his ribs.

He ran until he was sure he was safe; when he finally dared to stop, he leaned against a wall and stayed motionless for a dizzy minute of vertigo. But adrenaline won over and, after a few deep breaths, he began walking again.

As he walked, he started shuddering, shuddering uncontrollably, terribly, as though he was never going to stop.

 

*

 

Clint didn’t want to go back to the hotel—he wasn’t ready to face the others. It took him two hours to go back to the Bus on the outskirts of town. He climbed into the plane with a stiff, stumbling gait. He was still trembling so violently he almost had trouble breathing. He reached his room, walked into the shower and turned the water on without even stripping beforehand.

His shirt and pants slowly soaked and began to sag, heavy and sticky on his body. Black crusts of blood and red-brown water were twirling down the drain. He stayed there, shivering, still shivering despite the suffocating heat slowly filling the tiny shower. The pale, determined face of Betty Ross was branded onto his inner eye.

What hurt Clint the most—what cut his breath as though a stake had been forced between his ribs—wasn’t the fake rape attempt, the horror of Ross’s manipulations, or even the whole new light shed on the Ukrainian hospital. No—it was the way Betty Ross had kept saying, _us. We._ Like Bruce and she were undeniably one. And yet she’d said Bruce did not want to be cured anymore, and this was what he had promised to _Clint._ So Clint was stuck not knowing what to think—and he couldn’t _bear_ the idea of himself obsessing over this. He was so sick with his own selfishness he couldn’t stand it.

Betty Ross was so brave, and so selfless, and so _strong—_ even though her own father… her own father… _fuck,_ this was a nightmare, and Clint? Clint had hurt her, and it was for _show,_ but how could he be sure he hadn’t _wanted_ to hurt her? How could he trust himself over this? Since he was so petty and self-centered, how could he know for sure he wasn’t even worse than that, how could he know this hadn’t been a despicable attempt at getting back at her?

He pressed his forehead against the plastic wall, feeling the ground sway under his feet, feeling sick to his bones. He wanted it to stop, he wanted it to stop, he just wanted it all to _stop…_

*

The door of the small room opened an eternity later. Clint had cut off the water, but he was still sitting in the shower with too wide eyes, unable to get up or gather himself together.

“He’s here,” he heard someone say.

Natasha slipped inside and looked down at him, with terribly cold eyes.

She took a step forward and Clint felt like a spider, trapped in the shower as he was, curled up and shaking. She handed him a glass of water and a small white pill. Clint stared at them, too dazed to understand, too out of it to even know if there was anything to understand.

“Take it,” Natasha said sharply.

“Wh—” he croaked, feebly. “What is it?”

“Take it or I’ll force it down your throat.”

He was past caring. He took the pill and drank it all.

He was unconscious before he’d even given her back the glass.

 

*

 

He opened his eyes and stared at the opposite wall for a long, hazy time.

He was lying down on a stiff cot and it was very dark. Actually, the entire room was painted in black, bathed in a very dim, fluorescent light. There was a strange, hexagonal pattern on the walls, repeated again and again, like a bee hive. He didn’t recognize it, and yet he instinctively knew he hadn’t left the plane. What…

Oh.

The cell. They’d put him in the interrogation room.

He closed his eyes again, and he just wanted to lay here and do nothing; but Bruce was out there and Clint, despite being the complete fuck-up he was, could now do something to help him.

He sat up with a huge effort.

“Hey,” he called out in a raspy voice. “I know you can hear me. I’ve got to talk to you.”

There was a long silence.

Then the door of the cell opened. Natasha walked in and stopped on the threshold, hands clasped behind her back.

Clint started saying something but she cut him off with a brisk, cold, “So.”

There was a sharp pause.

“Here’s what we know,” she went on. “You walked inside the fast-food without any explanation and scared away our target, only to join her in the toilet and apparently assault her. You then proceeded to run away without a word of explanation, break into our secret plane in broad daylight, and almost bleed out in your shower.”

Clint’s throat went so dry it burned. He flexed his arm and felt the thick bandages around it. “This looks bad,” he said. “I—I know.” He tried to swallow and failed. “You have… you have to give me a chance to explain. Please.”

“Oh, but we're all _very_ eager to hear what you have to say for yourself.”

This was meant to scare him, but he was only tremendously relieved she would hear him.

“Okay—I—she was on coms, too,” he said, stumbling over the words in his haste. “I listened to your conversation and I guessed she was on coms.”

Natasha stared at him with narrowed, distrustful eyes.

“How?” she let out eventually.

“The—the way she spoke. The things she said. Like…” He dug for examples but his mind was empty. “It doesn’t matter, I don’t—I acted on a hunch, okay?”

Weirdly, this was what caused Natasha to nod at him to go on.

“And she _was_ on coms,” he said. “But she wasn’t spying on us. She was the one being watched. She’s a hostage. She’s Ross’s hostage.”

Natasha frowned minutely. “Ross?”

“Yeah. I know—his own daughter, it sounds crazy, but—”

“No,” she said. “That wouldn’t surprise me. He _is_ completely obsessed with Banner.”

He couldn’t believe that she believed him. But she _was_ still listening, so he hurried to go on. “So—Banner and Betty Ross, they’re hostages to each other. They’re—they’re caught. If one of them stumbles, the other goes down, it’s—it’s like a vicious circle, I know it looked like they were free but—but it was for show, they’re trapped, they’re completely trapped—”

“Vicious circle,” Natasha said calmly. “Got it. Now tell me how.”

“There was—there was a coms system woven into her blouse, but also a camera grafted in her right eye and rigged with a failsafe. She said SHIELD knew about this—this tech. So we had to pretend—to make it look like rape so I could tear off her blouse and so she could close her eyes—otherwise she would have been killed, or—or something would have happened to B—to Banner, I guess. I don’t know—we didn’t exactly have time to—”

“Calm down,” Natasha said.

Her eyes weren’t as cold as before. “Okay, so you got rid of the surveillance system. And then what did she tell you?”

“She said—” Clint finally managed to swallow a little, “she said Banner did not want to be cured anymore. Said that he was being forced to experiment on himself—that it had been a while; she said Ross had moved them around a lot.”

“And?”

“And that’s it. I had to get out of there. But I gave her my earpiece and if she’s clever—and she is—she’ll have swallowed it. We can track them down.”

Natasha stared at him for a long time.

Then, unexpectedly, she smiled a little in the corner of her mouth, the Work Wife’s smile Clint hadn’t seen in a long, long time.

“Well, well.”

She tilted her head onto the side. “Welcome back, Hawkeye.”

Clint blinked at her.

“You—um,” he said after a while, “What?”

“You know,” she said, almost dreamily. “You fuck up a lot, but you’re always the one who seems to get things moving.”

He suddenly understood why they’d locked him in the cell. Because he’d looked like he was out of control, yes; but also, _mostly,_ because Natasha had found him in the shower with his veins sliced open.

And, yeah. He would have thought the same.

“Nat,” he said in a low voice.

His heart was pounding.

“I’m not doing well,” he said, because she could see that anyway. “But I’m not doing _that_ bad.”

She nodded, and he knew she believed him.

“You’ll get around,” she said.

And Clint realized that—even though she still didn’t suspect the reason he had gotten so low—she was right. Because Bruce _was_ in need of help, so no matter how nauseous Clint still felt thinking about himself, he would get up again.

“Alright then, suit up,” Natasha concluded. “It’s about time we strike back.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

            

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew. I'd really, really love to know what you think of this one. :)


	9. Haywire

 

 

 

 

 

Clint took a quick shower—without his clothes, this time—and took the chance to check his arm. It wasn’t too badly cut, but still, there must have been pieces of glasses stuck in there. Natasha had probably gotten out the tweezers and sworn at him in Russian while she worked him over…

 

…

 

“ _You’re really stubborn,” Clint said softly._

 

 

“ _Mmh,” Bruce mumbled in answer._

 

 

_He wasn’t looking at him, focusing on Clint’s ruined hands._

_His head was tilted just enough for Clint to see the soft angle of his cheekbone, the light stubble on his jaw, the frailer, darker skin under his eyes._

_Details._

“ _Well,” Bruce sighed when he was done._

_His voice was always slightly husky, and Clint couldn’t tell whether it was because he had screamed too hard and too much in the past, or whether he was simply born with this soft, veiled hoarseness, like a dreamer in his sleep._

“ _I guess it could be worse.”_

 

_His hands were warm around Clint’s hands._

 

Clint brutally shook his head.

His heart was pounding. He turned off the shower and dried himself, threw the towel on the bed, dressed himself in full battle gear, checked his bow.

Stop thinking.

Stop thinking.

 

*

 

“Just in time for the party,” Logan growled when he came in.

Clint was so used to being the focus of their attention that he felt weird when they did not turn to look at him, especially after what had happened yesterday. But as it turned out, this show was already on the road. Two big screens were lighting up; Tony Stark appeared on one of them; the other one took its sweet time, but eventually, Xavier’s image came into focus. Behind him stood Cyclops, that furry blue guy—Beast?—a black woman with white hair, and Kurt Wagner, surprisingly. Kurt kept running his pointy tongue over dark blue lips, which split in a sharp, white grin when he saw Clint.

Clint smiled back a little; the veiled eyes of the woman—was she blind?—trailed over his face, but her features remained motionless.

“Alright, unofficial super-secret crossover meeting is go,” Tony said gleefully, although he looked and sounded like he was getting even less sleep than usual. “Cap, will you do us the honors?”

Steve repressed a sigh, then said, “Yes—thank you, everyone. Betty Ross’s tracker is telling us that she’s still in Switzerland. According to Hawkeye, General Ross is blackmailing Banner by threatening to set off the failsafe he built in his daughter’s eye.”

Xavier’s features hardened a little, but he only nodded for Steve to continue.

“Our goal is to extract both Bruce Banner and Betty Ross at the same time so they can’t be used against each other. We know the kill switch is remote-controlled—Coulson came across this kind of tech already.”

A few files folded opened on the screen. Clint peered at them; he saw a black woman push a needle into her own eye—radios of implanted cameras tucked into a gaping eye socket—a chubby man falling backwards with blood filling his rolled-back eye.

_Peachy._

He thought of Betty Ross—thought of her porcelain bones, of her wide, haunted eyes—and suppressed a shiver.

“Therefore, we must neutralize General Ross so we can perform emergency surgery on Betty Ross,” Steve was saying. “Problem is—we lack a surgeon.”

“We don’t,” Beast said in an unexpectedly soft voice—Clint had never heard him talk before.

“Hank is very qualified,” Xavier approved with a smile. “I’ll send a team over at once. It should reach you in about three hours.”

Steve didn’t ask how this was even possible and where the X-Men’s secret school was.

“Thanks a lot, professor,” he said. “Tony, any updates on Betty Ross’s location?”

“Yup, just locked in,” Tony said, leaning over another screen on his side. “Aaaand… I’m afraid it’s a military base outside Zurich. Uploading you a map right now.”

“Well, I’m military too,” Steve said dryly.

“Who will you take on the field, Captain?” Xavier asked.

“Widow, Spider-Woman, and Hawkeye.”

Clint’s heart jumped a little in his chest.

“Hey—what about me?” Logan growled.

“You can’t move from the plane; it might have been spotted after yesterday.”

Steve’s voice was neutral and he never glanced towards Clint, but Clint still felt even more ashamed of himself, if it was possible. “Besides,” Steve went on, turning to Logan, “You’re our beacon for Xavier’s team.”

Logan looked at him a bit wide-eyed. It was the most surprised Clint had seen of him.

“You know about Cerebro?” he said eventually, raising an eyebrow.

“We talked,” Xavier said soberly.

He looked at Steve. “By the way, Mr. Barnes is doing better.”

Steve didn’t blink. “Thank you.”

No one asked anything, not even Tony.

“ _Getting on site in fifteen minutes,”_ Jessica’s voice said above them.

“Alright, let’s get moving,” Steve said, and both screens blinked off.

 

*

 

The Bus landed in a field twenty miles away from their actual target, and they all climbed into the Quinjet to reach the military base.

Clint hadn’t flown a Quinjet in ages. The commands felt good when he closed his hands around them, although the muscles in his wounded arm strained a bit when he flexed them. Jessica was sitting in the copilot seat; she looked askance at him, but he stared straight ahead.

Night was falling when they blasted off. Down below, Switzerland looked like any other country after dark. Clint rather liked flying at night; stars above and below.

 “So how are we going to do this?” Natasha asked.

“We need to get Ross,” Steve said.

Natasha was right behind Clint, and he heard her power her Widow’s Bites as Steve went on, “We can’t rescue Banner without endangering Betty, and vice versa. Ross is the one holding both their leashes. We should focus on him, not on them.”

“If we corner him, he’ll threaten to trigger the failsafe,” Natasha pointed out.

“Would he do that, though?” Jessica asked. “His own daughter?”

Clint would’ve had trouble believing it, too; but he’d seen the look on Betty Ross’s pale, haunted face. And he knew what parents could do to their own children.

Bruce knew, too.

“Yeah,” Clint said under his breath. “Definitely.”

He remembered the hospital in Ukraine, the small, windowless, suffocating room. He tightened his hands on the commands.

_Stop thinking._

How long had Bruce been Ross’s captive? How long, alone in the dark, and then out it in the light—prisoner all the same?

_Stop._

_Thinking._

“We’re going off course,” Jessica murmured next to him.

He nodded stiffly, once, and corrected it.

“Think they’ll be expecting us?” Jessica asked out loud.

“Depends on how believable Betty was,” Steve murmured.

Clint’s hands tightened even more. Betty Ross’s play had been _very_ believable—so much that he was still feeling filthy, disgusting, as though he was covered in stinking mud which wouldn’t wash away. He _knew_ she knew it had been for show. But still—how could she have known for sure, at the beginning? God, her arm in his grip, her porcelain doll arm he could have broken so easily…

He began to feel nauseous again. He took a deep breath.

“Hey, whatever happened to that kid?” Jessica asked softly.

It took him a second to realize she was talking to him. Behind them, Steve and Natasha were still discussing the plan.

“I—what?” he whispered back. “What kid?”

“That rich girl who took you on car chases,” Jessica developed, even lower.

Clint didn’t understand for a minute.

“ _Katie?”_ he murmured at last. “I—I don’t know—why?”

“Well, you stopped calling her. She was worried. I had to tell her every week I didn’t know where you were.”

Clint blinked, astounded. “I—what? No,” he hissed, “that’s the other way around. She stopped calling me, after—” he inhaled sharply, “—after the courthouse.”

“Oh,” Jessica murmured, cold and polite. “And did anyone _ever_ call you after the courthouse?”

“What? No. Not really. It was… it was a bad…—why are you even asking?”

She looked at him as if he was a new species of sea urchin.

“Are you really that dumb?”

He stared back at her.

And then, it finally, _finally_ occurred to him, one month late, that when all your contacts stop calling you all at once, the problem might be—with the fact that you started a worldwide civil war, sure; but the problem might also be, quite more trivially, _with_ _your_ _phone._

He realized he hadn’t cared enough for the thought to even cross his mind.

She saw him bite his lip, and snorted.

 “And now he sees the light.” She shook her head. “You’re the luckiest moron I know, Clint. You were so careless by the end that you should have been killed within a day; but you were hiding your face thanks to the cold, and no one could track you through your phone, because it was broken and you didn’t _notice.”_

“Where are you going with this?” Clint said.

The sharpness of his own tone surprised him and he realized he was getting angry. He really didn’t need this kind of thing just before a field mission where he ought to stay focused. 

“Nowhere,” she said defiantly. “Until I get somewhere.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning you’ve been hiding something from the start and I want to find out what it is.”

She glanced at him. He held her gaze for a minute, then looked away.

“I’ll find out eventually,” she said.

He clenched his jaw and said nothing.

 

*

 

Clint landed the Quinjet in the small clearing in the middle of the woods near the military base. As far as those buildings got, this one looked almost innocuous, sitting in the middle of the country near a calm, scintillating lake, between high, darkened mountains. The windows were lit up, but the rest of the building only looked all the darker. Clint was the last to get out of the Quinjet.

Right here, right then, in the middle of the night, he suddenly wondered whether he shouldn’t tell them that Bruce—that he and Bruce—

—but then Cap started speaking, and the moment was over.

“Alright,” he said. “Spider-Woman, Widow, try to sneak in while we get them busy, and keep us posted. Hawkeye, we got each other’s back.”

“Roger that,” Clint mumbled, adjusting his earpiece.

Only yesterday, he wouldn’t have trusted himself to have his own back, but today he couldn’t screw up—not today. He checked the controls of his quiver, and took a deep breath.

Steve tapped a little screen on his wrist; a soft light blinked steadily in the middle. “She’s still inside,” he said. “Let’s go.”

 

They weren’t long to reach the entrance. It was a full moon, and although Clint usually liked being able to see where he was going, he would have given anything to avoid the full blast of pale light which painted their shadows on the ground like puddles of ink. Natasha and Jessica had already vanished in the night. It was weird to see Steve without his bright-colored costume; but then again, the time of color was over, wasn’t it?

Clint’s heart was pounding, but he was very calm. He had to be.

The man at the gate was dozing off, but he still jumped awake when they simply walked inside.

“Hey—you can’t—”

“Oh, I think we can, son,” Steve answered coldly.

The man was about to stop them, but then he saw Steve’s face in full moonlight and gaped.

“You—you—you are dead,” he stammered.

“It happens,” Steve said with dignity.

People were already running towards them. Clint’s fingers itched for an arrow, but he willed himself to stay calm. He had to trust Cap. There was simply no way for them to enter stealthily, and they couldn’t decently walk in as hostiles. Steve _was_ military.

“I am here to see General Thaddeus Ross,” he said.

“He’s not here.”

Steve gave him an unimpressed look. “And you just happen to be an American soldier in a Swiss base? Last time I checked, this was a neutral country.” He smiled. “But of course, I’ve been known to be a bit out of date.”

“I—sir, we—”

The man suddenly froze and raised a hand to his ear. “Yessir,” he said. Then, again, “Yessir.” He looked up. “Actually, you’re right. General Ross is expecting you.”

“Is this some kind of Bond movie, or what?” Clint muttered.

Steve smiled at him, but said nothing, and they both followed the soldiers inside.

“ _We’re in,”_ Natasha’s distant voice said in Clint’s ear.

He shook his head as if to get rid of a tinnitus and squared his shoulders.

He was glancing around, trying to register as many details as he could, but nothing could change the fact that he was walking into a military base with nothing but a gun and a bow. Steve looked perfectly calm, as always; he walked as though he owned the place. Clint wondered why he’d picked him to be his teammate; probably so Hawkeye wouldn’t go haywire and fuck up on his own once again. Still—to have him near felt good.

Then they were led down the hall and suddenly, Thaddeus Ross was there.

He was sitting alone in an empty room, next to a table with a single ashtray in which he tapped a thin brown cigar. Clint’s training compelled him to remain completely impassive under the bright neon; but all he could see in his head was an angry, angular handwriting— _DO NOT FEED THE HULK._

“Ah, Captain!” Ross exclaimed, getting up from his chair. “What took you so long?”

He walked forward and shook Steve’s hand. Clint said nothing, did nothing, and did not extend his own hand to grasp Ross’s. The general smirked, and looked at Steve again. “Alright, let’s go straight to the point,” he said, putting his cigar out. “You’re here about Doctor Banner.”

“We are,” Steve simply said.

“And you want to—what—hire him? Free him, maybe?”

Steve didn’t answer, and Ross let out an unpleasant laugh. “Banner is not my prisoner, Captain.”

“We’ve got evidence against that,” Clint said between his teeth.

“Do you now?” Ross said, squinting at him.

Clint opened his mouth—and then he realized that Ross probably recognized him as Betty’s would-be rapist from her camera footage. And if he wasn’t mentioning it—it meant he wasn’t sure they knew about the camera and the failsafe. So Clint immediately changed course and said, “That Ukrainian hospital wasn’t exactly comfy.”

Ross snorted, but he didn’t look suspicious anymore. “The Ukrainian hospital. You call that evidence?” He looked at Steve. “I guess you were really desperate to reassemble a team, Captain.”

Clint prickled a little—ridiculous, really, _calm down,_ but Steve said quietly, “This is about Banner.”

“Of course. And you didn’t answer my question. Why are you looking for him?”

“I think you know why.”

“Well, let me tell ya something,” Ross said. “The world is changing, Captain. You are a sensible man; you know that power attracts power. If not for Iron Man, New York would have never been targeted three years ago; if not for the Avengers, superhuman crime wouldn’t have spiked up the way it did. Criminals adapt, Captain Rogers. It is my duty—our duty, as military men, to enforce law and order. And the new direction this world is taking is a _good_ thing. A pathway to quieter times. No more vigilantes—and you know, deep inside, that we’ll be better off without them.”

Steve didn’t answer. Maybe he agreed.

“I know the Avengers themselves have been wary of Banner,” Ross went on. “And why shouldn’t they? The Hulk is a _menace._ He’s only useful against enemies _he_ attracted in the first place. The rest of the time, he’s a walking nuclear bomb.”

He raised his hands in an apologetic gesture. “Yes, I have played a part in the monster’s birth; yes, I am partially to blame. But it only means it’s my duty to put it down; and that’s all I want to do. Put it down. No more experiments; no more weaponizing.” He lowered his hands. “Do we have to be enemies, Captain?”

“I’d shed a tear, but I’m fresh out,” Clint muttered.

“This all sounds very good,” Steve said, more conciliatory. “But we only have your word for it.”

“You’ve got Banner’s as well,” Ross said. “He always wanted to kill the monster. I just want to help him—just like in the old days. He needs equipment and safety; I can give him both.”

“Very well,” Steve said. “Let us see him, then.”

“Very well,” Ross echoed.

He pressed a button and the wall behind them became translucent—it wasn’t a wall at all; it was a screen which acted like a two-way mirror. And behind it was a bright white room, and in this room was a man in sad, grey clothes.

Clint was not prepared.

He went completely still. Absolutely, completely petrified—Ross could have drawn a gun and shot him and Clint wouldn’t have moved a muscle. He could only stare. He could not even breathe. He could just _stare_ as though his life depended on it.

Bruce was sitting on a cot, gazing into space. He looked awful.

There was no other word—he looked just _awful._ Clint had always seen him looking weary and shy; but there had been an undercurrent of wry strength running beneath. This Bruce looked like he had lost all hope. His eyes were blood-shot and unfocused; the dark rings under them made it look like he’d been punched in the face. His skin was sallow, his features were strained, and he looked scrawnier than ever—not just scrawny but underfed. He looked like a trapped animal who knows it’s been trapped.

And he was shivering, very slightly.

“He doesn’t look so good,” Ross admitted. “But then again, he never did.”

Clint swallowed his shock and suddenly felt an ungodly fury crash into him, rushing to his ears and making his blood boil in his veins, physically blinding him for one second of pure hatred.

“Besides, he’s got the strain of the Hulk fighting back every time we test something,” Ross went on. “We tried controlled starvation, but it didn’t do the trick. Confinement, sensory deprivation—all that only made him angrier. Shock therapy’s our best option for now. After all—”

Clint snapped his bow open and aimed at him.

Ross took a step back. “Captain,” he hissed. “Control your people.”

“Clint—” Steve began.

“ _General Ross, sir,”_ a voice distorted by cheap speakers suddenly said, “ _We’ve got two intruders in B-13 and they just took down half a squad.”_

Ross frowned at Steve. “Well, Captain,” he said. “I am highly disappointed in you. I thought you were a reasonable man.”

“I can explain,” Steve said, then whispered, “Clint, weapons _down.”_

“Fuck that,” Clint spat, shaking with pure anger. “He’s not getting away with it.”

“Dear,” Ross called out, “would you come here for a minute?”

The door opened and Betty Ross walked in.

When she saw Clint, she went very pale but said nothing; she crossed the room with her head down to go by her father’s side. He put a paternal hand on her shoulder, and Clint thought he was going to throw up.

Ross barked a laugh when he saw neither Betty not Clint were looking surprised. “I _knew_ you hadn’t really attacked her,” he said. “Well, since we’re laying our cards on the table, here’s my hand: Captain, get your team to stand down or I’ll trigger the kill switch.”

He was holding a small, black remote control.

“Your own daughter,” Steve said in a low voice.

“She said herself she wasn’t my daughter anymore, Captain. Yes, I sacrificed my family to rid the earth of the Hulk. Haven’t you made sacrifices of your own, in your time? Your friends? Your love?”

Steve ignored his attempts at manipulation and said, “You would destroy your only mean of control over Banner?”

“Well I don’t have to _kill_ her,” Ross said with a horrible grin. “I can blind her. Partially paralyze her. It all depends on how _threatened_ I feel.”

Betty Ross was pale as death, staring straight ahead.

“And what if I put an arrow through your goddamn eye socket first, uh?” Clint snarled. “Will you be threatened enough then?”

“Threatened enough to kill her,” Ross grinned.

He lightly shook Betty’s shoulder. “Go on, dear, tell them.”

“It’s true,” she answered, in a toneless voice. “We’re linked. If his pulse stops, the failsafe will snap.”

“Alright,” Steve said, “alright. Clint, for Christ’s sake, _weapons down.”_ He raised two fingers to his ear. “Widow, Spider, turn yourselves in.”

But Clint didn’t lower his bow. Betty Ross was looking at him, with blood-shot eyes stripped down to haunted intensity.

And Clint got it then. He understood everything.

He aimed at the two-way mirror and released his arrow.

The adamantium arrowhead stuck itself in the middle of the reinforced glass, and the embedded screen flickered through a range of weird colors; a shockwave of cracks spread around the arrow like a spider web and suddenly, the entire mirror shattered in a million pieces.

“Stop this!” Ross barked.

Clint had already pulled out another arrow. His blood was thrumming in his ears and he _couldn’t_ look inside, couldn’t check to see if Bruce had seen him, because he was all aim, all focus, _backmusclestightenandlock—_

“Stop this right now or _I’ll_ end it!” Ross shouted.

“Not if I end it first,” Clint murmured. He opened his fingers again—

 

—and Betty Ross was set free.

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am not wringing my hands and biting my nails waiting for your comments. Nope. Not at all.


	10. For oh so long

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next were colors.

 

Red first—bright red blood against the pale white of Betty’s throat. 

Black next—the deep wet black of her shocked eyes, matching the black of the long shaft sticking out of her neck.

Green last—a very, very green explosion bursting right behind her.

The roar of the Hulk rang through the enclosed atmosphere and burst through Clint’s ears, so loud he thought he was going deaf again. 

He took a step back. Ross was shouting, and screaming, and Steve was shaking Clint and yelling something at him, but Clint didn’t understand the words. He couldn’t think. He was looking at the Hulk stepping out of the room, shaking off pieces of multicolored glass. He extended a giant hand towards Clint, and Clint closed his eyes.

The Hulk picked him up with surprising gentleness.

Clint reopened his eyes, looked up at him. He couldn’t feel his own body anymore. He could only watch what was happening, as though it was all a dream.

Hulk uncurled himself—vertebra after vertebra, like a tidal wave building up; his shoulders pushed against the ceiling which cracked under his strength; pipes broke down in the walls and fluids and gas came gushing out. An alarm screamed, and chunks of concrete started to fall all around them, and the last thing Clint saw was Steve rushing to get Betty out of the way before Hulk just _leapt._

It was like being propelled into the stars. 

Clint hung onto him for dear life and felt like outer space had swallowed them up; and then they started falling down, and his stomach did a somersault but he barely felt the ground before Hulk leapt again, and when he landed for the second time, Clint was certain they were in another country. Hulk leapt yet again, as though he was never going to stop; Clint’s com piece was screaming in his ear but he still couldn’t hear the words, and when the Hulk jumped again, Clint closed his eyes.

He must have passed out, because when he reopened them, this didn’t even look like Western Europe anymore, and there was no way they had covered so much ground in just a few minutes. He looked around, trying to get his bearings, but he felt sick. The Hulk had stopped leaping; he was still running through the low bushes and the high grass; the sky was open and free over their heads, and Clint _had_ passed out, because the horizon was greying with the first hints of dawn. 

The Hulk was running east, steady in his rage or maybe in his fear, running away from the whole world, and taking Clint with him. Clint had no idea what was coming next, and he didn’t want to look back, either; so he focused on the present, and the present was made of freedom and of the wide sky and of the infinite earth, of having no idea where he was, and of being carried away by an unstoppable force, of being _alive,_ for the first time in months, he felt so painfully alive that he laughed hysterically, until his throat felt raw; and then he closed his eyes once more, and didn’t open them again.

 

*

 

“ _Hawkeye, do you copy?”_

The line was sizzling with static; the words barely recognizable. 

“ _Hawkeye, do you copy?”_

Clint rolled on his side and realized he was lying in the dust. He straightened up, very stiffly; there was nothing to be seen but the endless brown and green and white of the steppes, and the hazy purple of the mountains in the background. The silence here felt thicker, louder than any human sound. He could have been in Narnia for all he knew.

“ _Hawkeye, do you copy?”_

He coughed a little, and a loud snort made him jump. He looked round, heart hammering in his chest; the Hulk was there, staring at the sky. 

He turned to Clint and growled, low in his throat. 

“Awake,” he said.

And then he said, “Clint.”

Clint swallowed thickly. 

“…Hey.” 

All of it. Everything that happened, and that was all he could say. 

He pushed himself up and got up on his feet, wobbling.

“Hulk, where are we?” he asked, trying not to collapse.

“Far enough,” Hulk grunted.

Clint was not afraid. He just had to know. 

“Are you going to kill me?” 

Hulk snorted again, more softly. He was really, really huge. “Not you.”

“Why not me?” Clint asked. 

He felt sick at heart. “Why not?” he repeated wearily.

“You kept your promise,” Hulk said.

Clint blinked at him.

“ _Hawkeye, do you copy?”_

“What promise?”

“Talking to Banner,” Hulk said. “Banner listened. Banner tried. Because you talked to him.”

God, yes, Clint remembered now. But that was in another life. That was in another world, not this flat earth that went on forever as though this was the beginning of times and the mountains were just figures painted on the sky.

He suddenly wavered and Hulk frowned, almost reaching out for him.

“ _Hawkeye, do you copy?”_

Clint finally raised a hand to his earpiece. “This—” he coughed hoarsely. Everything was spinning around him. “This—this is Hawkeye. I copy.”

There was a silence; then Natasha spoke again. “ _Is the Hulk still with you?”_

Clint had expected her to yell at him or—or worse. To mention what had happened, at the very least. What he’d done. 

He didn’t know what to say other than, “—Yeah. I think we’re in the Caucasus.”

“ _Take cover.”_

“What?” he rasped. “Nat—what’s going on?”

“ _You’re too far for our tracking system. We might not reach you before Ross does.”_

“I thought—” he coughed again, raspy and painful. “What about Stark’s satellite? Isn’t it up by now?”

“ _Stark’s mansion was blown up five hours ago by the Mandarin. We can’t get a hold of him.”_

Clint’s blood iced down in his veins.

“ _Hide until we get close enough to track you,”_ Natasha concluded.

“Wait— _wait_ —what happened with—”

The communication ended. In this silence was everything Clint needed to know.

He looked up at Hulk, who huffed through his nose. Obviously, he had heard everything. “Don’t want to be found,” he said. “Never again.”

“I don’t want you to be found either,” Clint said wanly.

He tottered again and this time, Hulk gave him his forearm to lean on. Clint clutched at it to stay upright, then he said with difficulty, staring into the green eyes, “But we don’t always get what we want. Right? And you’re—we’re going to be found. Eventually. Can’t be avoided. And I’d rather be found by—by the Avengers than by Ross.” He clutched tighter. “But it’s up to you. If you want to run—” he swallowed, and suddenly blurted, “Please don’t run again.” He turned his face against the green skin and repeated in a breath, “Please don’t run again.”

Hulk said nothing. 

And then he said, “Okay.”

 

*

 

At first, Clint tried walking, but the Hulk eventually decided that he was too slow and just picked him up again to let him sit on his shoulders. Clint hesitantly grabbed his hair for balance, then pulled harder when he realized the big guy didn’t mind; and he let himself be carried.

It was… it was nice. The sickly dizziness he’d gotten from Hulk’s mad race was finally starting to wear off. Somehow, he felt he was higher from the ground on the Hulk’s shoulders than he’d been on the plane. The steady roll of his gait was blurring Clint’s thoughts in a weary haze. He really could not think; perhaps he was cowering from it all, but for once, he didn’t even have the strength to hate himself over it. In this endless plain, under the endless sky, it was hard to realize that they were not free—that the vastness of the world was but an illusion, and that there was in truth nowhere to run. For now, Clint could do nothing about it, and it was strangely freeing.

The Hulk went up the steep slope of a mountain, deep inside the woods, higher and higher, until he came across an old concrete dam hidden in the forest. Spring had hit the Caucasus at long last, and there were only a few patches of snow left in the shadow of the trees; Clint still felt cold, and he was relieved to see a low, square building at the end of the dam. The Hulk smelled the wind for a second, then apparently concluded that there was no one there; and before Clint could say anything to stop him, he stepped on the dam.

Clint gripped his hair with renewed strength, but nothing happened; the concrete remained steady and still under the Hulk’s weight. Of course, it was holding against tons of water, but still—still—Clint forced himself to relax a little and let out a deep breath. On his left was the restless surface of the lake—fresh, translucent water sparkling with the rays of the setting sun—and on his right the vertical wall of the dam plunging down into the valley. The Hulk walked it like a tightrope and stepped on the other side. He reached up to pluck Clint from his shoulders, and gently set him on the ground. 

The small house was empty—there weren’t any windows, only square holes in the walls; it was just a cube of concrete. Hulk stared at it with dead eyes.

“…Are you okay?” Clint asked.

Hulk shook himself.

“Tired,” he grumbled.

He slipped inside, and only then did Clint realize he had grown smaller. He realized what was about to happen, and his stomach suddenly twisted in a terrible knot. He couldn’t—he couldn’t—he _couldn’t._

“Wait!” he gasped. “Stay a little longer.”

Hulk sat heavily on the ground and looked up at him, weary and confused. “Stay?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Clint stammered on the threshold. “Just—talk to me. I don’t know—tell me what happened to you those past months.”

Hulk peered at him as he unbuckled his quiver and put down his bow. The low, droning sound of the water flowing out the dam gates only seemed to make the silence thicker. 

“You want to know?” Hulk asked at least.

“I want to know,” Clint insisted, and he realized it was true—it wasn’t only a way to delay the inevitable. 

Hulk snorted again, very low. “Banner said can’t go back,” he mumbled. “Then Ross came and said kill Hulk and Banner said no and Ross said kill Betty.” He huffed through his nose. “Should have gone back. Banner never listens.”

He was a lot more articulate than last time, Clint realized—and that was when he understood, with full force, that Bruce really had _tried_ reaching out to him. Unexpected tears suddenly pricked his eyes and he forced them back, furious at himself.

“And then what?” he said, trying to keep his voice steady.

“And then nothing,” Hulk grumbled.

He leaned against the wall. “Hulk sleep now.”

“No—please,” Clint blurted, but the big guy was curling up on the cold concrete, and suddenly he wasn’t so big anymore; he shrank and shrank and shrank, and then it was just Bruce.

Clint’s terror came to a peak just before the transformation ended, and he could have run away—he almost actually did; but when he saw Bruce—when he saw _Bruce,_ curled up on himself, so damn skinny, concern blew the rest of his mind to hell.

Clint inched closer, leaning cautiously over the huddled figure.

 “Bruce?” he called, throat so dry and voice so small he could hardly hear himself.

Bruce was out like a candle. Clint didn’t know if he was relieved or desperate; perhaps it would have been easier to get it all over with. But he wasn’t about to wake him up. 

When he realized he was reaching out to touch him, his hand tightened into a fist at the last second, and he pressed that fist against his own stomach. 

“Bruce,” he repeated brokenly.

He pushed his fist deeper into his gut, curling up on himself. “Bruce, I’m so sorry,” he let out. “I’m so sorry.”

More than anything, he wanted to hold him in his arms and forget everything else; but he just dug through his pockets for a tin foil survival blanket and wrapped it around Bruce, the best he could, trying not to touch him. And then he sat against the wall, not too close, and turned on his earpiece again, trying to control his shivers.

“Hello?” he said. “Anybody copy?” 

There was no answer.

“This is Hawkeye,” Clint said, on the verge of breaking. “Please. Please. Does anybody copy?”

There was a low screech, and suddenly, Logan’s voice. “ _Barton.”_

Clint let out a shaky breath, eyes wide.

“ _We’re coming for you. Get off the coms.”_

And then—silence. 

Silence.

Clint dropped his hand and leaned back against the wall, eyes unseeing. He stayed there for who knew how long; he only noticed the sky outside was getting slightly darker, the light duskier and gloomier, the lake and trees slowly losing their color. There was nothing to be heard save for the continuous hum of the water.

And then he heard something else. And he realized, too late, that it was tin foil scrunching. 

“Oh,” he heard in a veiled, hoarse voice. “Oh no, no, no—” 

Clint didn’t dare to look—he was petrified anyway, frozen in gut-wrenching terror—but he still saw everything in the corner of his eye. Bruce was sitting up, still half-unconscious but apparently on the brink of panic, clawing at his naked arms and torso. “No—I wasn’t wearing it—where is—did I—”

And then he stopped and looked around, out of breath and shaking, probably realizing that this place was not like his usual prison. His gaze swept over the naked walls, over the square door and the dusky forest outside; and then he turned a bit more and he saw Clint.

Clint couldn’t _stand_ it and got up as if he’d been burned. “Yeah,” he said hoarsely before Bruce could react, as though they’d been talking for hours. “So. The Avengers should be here soon.”

He walked to the door and pretended to peer at the dusky forest. “I can leave,” he added, aiming for casual and missing by a few miles, “if you want. I can step outside.”

There was a thick silence, and each second was like a needle jabbed into Clint’s skin. Just when he thought that Bruce would never say anything, that they would just stay frozen and mute forever until one of them grew old and died, he heard again that voice, that husky, dazed voice. “…Clint?”

“I can leave,” Clint repeated, talking too fast.

Another silence, shorter. He heard tin foil being pushed away. “You can—you’re—what…” The scrunching sounds stopped. “You can… what? You’re not making any… Clint—is that… is that really you?”

Bruce’s voice broke on the last word and Clint’s heart twisted horribly. God this was wrong. This was all wrong. This was going to be even more excruciating than he’d thought.

“You don’t remember,” he said in a toneless voice.

Shit, but he was trembling.    

“Remember what? I—” Bruce cut himself off. “Did I hurt anyone?”

Clint could have laughed. He could have cried, too. He just leaned a little against the cement, feeling nauseous, light-headed. 

“I shot Betty,” he heard himself say.

Bruce got up behind him, and slowly got closer, the sound of his bare feet soft on the cement.

“Yes,” he said in a soft voice, after a long silence. “I remember that.”

The setting sun was painting a single flame across the trees and over the water; it burned Clint’s retina even though he was not seeing it, not really.

“But you didn’t kill her,” Bruce added, very low.

Clint felt like he was crumbling inside. 

“You know that?” he said, hoarsely, “that’s something you know?” 

He had not killed her—he had _not_ killed her, her blue jugular was so clearly visible under the pale skin, it had been so easy to miss it; sure, there had been a lot of blood but necks were full of that stuff, and it had not been arterial blood, Clint was sure, sure, sure, but Natasha’s silence—but Logan’s harshness—and how could Bruce be sure, how could he _know—_

“—You Hulked out,” Clint protested in a shaky voice.

“Because I finally could,” Bruce murmured. “Ross believed she was dead; so I could Hulk out and leave.” 

He got closer and God, Clint could feel his _warmth,_ and it nearly killed him where he stood. He physically couldn’t breathe, desperately trying to push a liquid air in and out his lungs.

“Wasn’t that your plan?” Bruce said.

Clint whipped round to face him, and he was lucky he’d stared at that beam of light for so long, because the inside of the dam house was dark and he could not see Bruce’s face—if he’d seen it, if he’d seen those eyes, he would have died on the spot. “It _was_ my plan,” he gasped. “It was my plan—but how can you _know_ that?”

He was trembling so hard now. “How can you be sure—how can you know—how can you _trust—”_

“Clint,” Bruce murmured, awkwardly reaching for him—and Clint couldn’t, he just _couldn’t_ contain himself anymore.

He threw his arms around Bruce and clutched at him so _hard,_ unable to breathe, choking on it all, feeling like his skin was too small for his body, his bones too big for his muscles; and he gripped Bruce’s hair, tugged at it, pushed his face into his neck like he was trying to hide there…

“Uh—Clint,” Bruce repeated in a strained voice, and Clint realized he must be hurting him. 

He tried to pull away and stammered, “Fuck—I’m sorry—I didn’t mean—”

But he wasn't really pulling away _—_ he wasn't pulling away  _at all,_ and he struggled against himself, but still he leaned forward; he was trying with all his strength to lean back but he was irresistibly drawn forward, and then, he was lost. There was no use fighting his arms as they wrapped around Bruce on their own volition, and he clung to him like he was drowning; and he couldn’t lie to himself—he’d yearned for this moment so much, so damn _much,_ even after seeing Bruce and Betty together. He was despicable for it, and he was many other things he couldn’t think of right now—because he still couldn’t let go because Bruce was here, because after so long Bruce was _here—_ just—here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I'd be thrilled to hear your thoughts. :D


	11. Before I go

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eventually, Clint started thinking at last and realized what he was doing; he tasted bitter shame in the back of his throat again; he clumsily tried to disentangle himself from Bruce, which wasn’t easy since his body was still straining to get closer again. Fuck, he really should work on his fucking self-control—

“Thanks,” Bruce mumbled.

Clint froze.

His eyes had finally gotten used to the darkness. Bruce’s gaze was downcast, and he really looked like shit, but he repeated in a small voice, “Thank you. I… I needed that.”

Clint realized something then.

He remembered that even though he’d fallen down an endless spiral of self-loathing, Bruce hadn’t been there to witness it. Sure, Clint had never managed to get his memory out of his head; he had built it into an unnatural, distorted, idealized image which had shattered at the first glimpse of reality—namely, the footage from the bank. But no matter how acutely Clint had kept feeling Bruce’s absence, like a ripped hole in the fabric of space, the real Bruce hadn’t been actually _there_ watching over his shoulder and witnessing his slow decay.

And now that he _was_ here, it was as though two pictures had been placed side by side—the Clint of seven months ago, and the Clint of now. The man Bruce expected him to be, and the man he really was. And the discrepancy between both was appalling.

He had no idea what to do now, or what to say, so his mouth just spilled out words on automatic mode.

“Uh,” he muttered. “You’re… you’re not wearing any clothes.”

“Now that’s a shocker,” Bruce mumbled, wrapping his arms around his own chest.

Clint smiled, and it took him completely by surprise. He looked at Bruce, hunched in on himself and holding up his shredded pants, and it hurt him like a blade twisting in his chest. God, he could see each and every one of his vertebrae. Not to mention his ribs and shoulder blades almost protruding under the skin.

“I’m going to kill him,” he mumbled without thinking.

Bruce didn’t ask who ‘him’ was. 

“Are you okay?” Clint murmured, trying to breathe past the tightness in his chest.

Bruce looked up to smile at him—a weary, soft smile. “Are you?” he asked.

Clint was unable to speak for a moment.

“I’m—yeah. It’s been…” he swallowed thickly, then tried to smile back, but it came out wrong. “It’s been a bit… tough.”

With a huge effort, he managed to get a grip on himself. “Sorry,” he said quickly, because he really wasn’t saying that enough. “I’m really sorry. I’ll—I’ll—I’ll get you the blanket.”

He slipped away from that intoxicating warmth and went to pick up the tin foil blanket; he brought it back to Bruce and wrapped it around him. Springtime in the evening wasn’t exactly being kind at this altitude. 

Outside, the sun slipped past the horizon; the darkness, which had crept in from between the trees where it lay during the day, slowly took wings, and then it was night—but the stars were bright above the mountain, and Clint’s eyes picked up the silver light with ease.

“So,” he repeated. “We… we just have to wait now.”

“Wait for…?” Bruce asked wearily.

Clint realized he still had his hands on Bruce’s shoulders, and quickly let go to wrap his arms around his own torso. For _Christ’s_ sake.

“Ross got away, apparently. Now everyone’s looking for us. I’ve been told to stay off the coms, but I’m sure the Avengers will be here soon.”

Bruce nodded, and Clint suddenly felt a nauseating fear twist his stomach at the thought of what he had to say next. “I…” He swallowed painfully. “Bruce, I… about Betty…”

Bruce looked up.

“It’s okay,” he said softly. “I know there’s a huge risk something went wrong. That’s why Hulk left her behind—so she could be looked after as soon as possible. But I know, too, what you can do—I’ve seen it firsthand.”

Clint was speechless for a second. “You—” he blurted. “Bruce—” he didn’t get it, he really  _didn’t—_ “Bruce, why aren’t you  _mad_ at me?”

“Why should I?” Bruce said, very softly.

“I—you—well, first of all, I _broke_ your computer,” Clint began, stupidly. “You never got mad about _that._ And I… everything that happened—it was all my fault, and then I attacked Betty—maybe I killed her, I—”

“Your _fault?”_ Bruce repeated.

Clint stared at him.

Bruce tightened the cover around him. “Clint,” he said simply. “You did what no one else was brave enough to do.”

Clint just kept staring.

“And you did it again when you shot Betty,” Bruce went on quietly. “There was no way out other than getting Ross to believe he couldn’t hurt her anymore. You saw that. You got that.”

Yes, in that split second when Betty had looked up at him with feverish eyes, Clint had remembered his promise to her; and he had understood what she really meant by it. There was no other way. But he didn’t expect anyone to understand his call or to agree with him. No one usually did. People being pissed off at him was a default setting.

He realized his eyes were watering and blinked it away. A few months ago, he couldn’t cry, but that time was long gone.

Bruce shook under his flimsy tin foil sheet, and Clint got himself together. “Hey—you should sit down,” he said. “Curl up a little. It’ll help with the cold.”

Bruce nodded, then sat down cross-legged, wrapped in his silver blanket like a strange, skinny space Buddha. Clint sat in front of him, black-clad in his semi-battle gear. Shit, he hadn’t even put on a Kevlar jacket, and he had forgotten his wrist-guards. He only realized it now; he felt like he was waking up from a long, restless sleep, to find himself more tousled and unkempt than ever.

“I can’t believe it’s you,” he blurted.

His throat was dry, but he couldn’t stop talking. “Bruce—just—how did it happen?” he said, with a pained edge in his voice. “ _What_ happened, all that time?”

Bruce sighed, then huddled against the wall. “Well, you read my letter.” He looked up, looking suddenly terrified. “You did, right?”

Clint opened his mouth, but words failed him and he just nodded, which was probably better. Bruce’s strung-up body relaxed by a fraction.

“Okay,” he said, sounding almost breathless. “Okay. Good. So—Peter got me out of New York. There was no way I could cross the Mexican border. I knew everyone would be waiting for me there. So I went to Canada, and from there, to Europe. I went as far as I could.” His voice dropped a notch. “But he still found me.”

He took a deep breath. “He sent Betty to my shack. He sent her with her failsafe already built in. And just like that, I was caught. I followed her back to Ross, and we left Siberia together.”

A sharp pang of pain pierced Clint’s heart, more terrible than anything he’d ever felt.

“Siberia,” he said hoarsely—and a train got away in his head, in the green-and-red glow of the traffic lights.

Bruce was looking down, rubbing his hands, so he couldn’t see the look on Clint’s face. “Yeah. I’m not really sure what happened after that. Where we actually went. He wouldn’t let me out at first.”

 Clint took a deep breath and tried to keep it together, to conceal it all. “Why—why did he?” he asked. “Why did he let you out at all?”

Bruce smiled, awfully weary. “I think Betty asked him. I don’t know what she did to get him to agree.”

He huddled up even more. “She kept trying to cheer me up even though she had it the worst. She’s been really… really amazing.”

"Yeah,” Clint murmured, in a low, wan voice.

Bruce shivered again. “But there was no way out. I could see no way out.”

He looked up with a faint smile.

“And then you came in.”

Clint stayed very, very still, so still he wasn’t really breathing.

“When you broke that mirror—” Bruce cut himself off, but he looked so fond. And Clint’s visceral reaction was triggered again. _I don’t deserve this._

“What about the Hulk?” he asked, because he was choking and he needed them to talk about something else—anything else.

Bruce’s features grew even more wistful. He let out a small, deprecating laugh. “I talked to him. At least once a day—or I tried. He wanted to be let out, and I… I actually wanted to try. I went further and further away before I did, and… it wasn’t as disastrous as I feared. I was beginning to think maybe… maybe something could work out.” He rubbed his face. “And then…”

“Ross,” Clint said.

“Yes. Yeah. I had no choice. I had to work on a cure again.” He sighed. “I don’t think he’ll ever forgive me.”

Clint let out a distorted laugh. “Bruce,” he said. “Of course he will. He’s not  _stupid.”_

Bruce blinked up at him, and he looked so lost, so surprised, so tired. Clint wanted to have him close again. To hold him…

He got up and took a few steps away. Bruce stared at him, looked like he wanted to say something, then like he’d changed his mind. “Was it—” he began. He waited for a second. “Was it… Steve I saw with you?”

Clint was so relieved for the opportunity to give him actual, unsullied good news, that he was almost dizzy. “Yeah,” he said hurriedly. “It was him. And, uh, Agent Coulson’s alive too, by the way.” He shrugged. “Turns out Fury’s a _liar.”_

“Who would’ve known,” Bruce murmured, but he had this worried, earnest look that meant he was focusing on something else. And Clint realized too late that the way he had gotten away from Bruce couldn’t possibly be perceived as natural.

“Clint,” Bruce said, hesitantly. “I… what about you? What happened?”

_What’s wrong with you,_ Clint heard,  _what the fuck is wrong with you._

“I—,” he stammered. “I… I… I got recruited. In Moscow. Natasha came for me and said they were… said they were assembling again. _Secret Avengers.”_

“That’s all they could come up with?” Bruce said.

“God, I _know,”_ Clint began—

—then shut up, because really? Who was he to raise eyebrows at the name they’d picked—he didn’t even care that much about the name of the team—well, no, that’s not what he meant, he did care but—

_Clint. Clint, what the fuck is wrong with you._

He took a deep breath and said meekly, “No. That’s… I guess that’s a good name.”

He rubbed his arm awkwardly for a second, then dropped his hand. “So, I… yeah, I don’t know what else to tell you. SHIELD unofficially got them a plane and Natasha’s been looking for team members ever since. We gathered… they gathered a lot of people already.”

“Really?” 

“Yeah. Like… Spider-Woman. Wolverine. The X-Men. And…”

But he shut up before he could talk about Iron Man gone MIA—Tony was Bruce’s friend. This could wait a few hours. 

Bruce leaned forward as though he was about to get up, and Clint’s hand snapped up. “Don’t—please, don’t. You’ll get cold again.”

Bruce froze, then slowly sat back.

“Clint,” he repeated. “What’s wrong?”

Clint’s blood turned into ice in his veins.

“Nothing.”

“Then why won’t you let me get up? I…” Bruce shivered, and then—his face slowly fell.

“Oh,” he said, very low.

_What?_

“I didn’t think…” Bruce said weakly. “Well. If you think it’s safer that way. I won’t… it’s okay. Sorry.”

There was no air left in Clint’s lungs. It hurt and it  _burned_ and he was a fucking  _moron._ “Bruce,” he choked. “Bruce—I’m not  _afraid_ of you.”

And then his tears started rolling down. “Shit, no,” he mumbled, wiping them off, but more took their place. “Bruce, I’m not… how could you think…”

Oh, yes, he  _was_ an idiot, because he hadn’t even tried to think about how it had been for Bruce. He hadn’t realized that it must have been the same—that Bruce must have built  _Clint’s_ memory into a distorted image, only to deepen his own guilt. Bruce already blamed himself for so much. Perhaps—probably—he blamed himself for the Barton Act too, since Clint had done it  _for_ him,  _because_ of him. And yet, obviously, he’d lost faith—he had stopped believing Clint cared about him. The certainty he’d timidly gained during their few weeks together, the shreds of self-confidence which had helped him write his good-bye letter where he explicitly stated the truth—that Clint loved him—it was all gone now.

What had he said when Clint had held him, a minute ago? _I needed this._ He had forgotten Clint wasn’t afraid of him anymore.

Clint crossed the empty room and sat in front of Bruce; he found his hand, and laced their fingers together, in a tight grip.

“Bruce.”

He held tighter. “All that time,” he said. “All I ever did was look for you.”

He opened his mouth, and he wanted to tell him about Switzerland, about Germany, about Siberia. He wanted to tell him about how he’d kept looking for him then remembering he wasn’t there, every morning—how he’d read his letter maybe a thousand times—and how he’d stopped caring about anything in the world, except him.

He laughed at himself, because really, _really._ “This is pathetic,” he said. “Everyone moved on, everyone’s trying to save the world, to set things right. They’re all working so hard. They’re so dedicated. They all adapted. Except me. Because all I could think of was—was that you weren’t there.”

Bruce was staring at him, eyes wide. Clint rubbed his forehead with his free hand. There was a sharp pain drilling in his skull. “I told you before,” he said. “I have no idea what I want from you. I still don’t. I only know that you weren’t there, and it was killing me.”

And then he let go of his hand.

It was hard, but he had to do it, because Bruce had enough unwanted attention from his enemies; he didn’t need it from his friends. That was all Clint could be, a friend; and he had no right, really, to ask for more, not when he didn’t even want _more_ in the way most people mean that word.

“I’m sure… I’m sure Betty will be alright,” he said, throat tight.

Getting up, he took a few steps back, until he could see the lake shimmering outside the empty door, like a sleek-skinned beast with fur the color of the night. The trees around cast deep shadows on the grey curve of the dam. The sight soothed him just a little, enough so he could look at Bruce again.

“And I’ll be alright too,” he promised, to Bruce and to himself. “Now I’ll be alright.”

 

And then he felt a violent shock, as though someone had stuck a hook into his stomach and  _pulled._

 

He blinked.

Then there was a second shock—this time, it was as though a refrigerator had smashed into his chest. His breath was pushed out of his lungs; he took a reeling step back, another one, and finally thought of looking down.

The second he saw it, he started feeling it—warm, gooey and wet; blood soaking his shirt and pants, already dripping down his leg. He looked up again, and saw that one of the shadows on the dam was _moving._

Everything started going slow.

So terribly slow he almost thought he could avoid the third bullet. The first two impacts felt strangely numb and painless, and he hadn’t even heard the shots. But he was going so slow, too, and thinking so slow, that he could only watch it happen, watch it spin on itself as it hissed through space to come drill into his chest, and bitterly, bitterly regret he hadn’t put on his damn Kevlar jacket.

There was no pain, but he distinctly felt something bend and break inside his chest before the numbness seized him again. He made the mistake of taking a deep breath, and _then_ pain exploded in his chest and throat; and he felt as though it was that pain, and not the pain of the three bullets, that finally made him topple backwards and collapse on the ground.

He found himself staring at the concrete ceiling, blinking, breathing fast.

His body was very, very far away, and he had lost all feeling from the belt down. The only thing he was conscious of was the disgusting warmth of his own blood overflowing his stomach and groin and starting to pool on the floor. The sniper in him felt a distant interest. Stomach and chest—it was a rather meek shot. Why not the head? But it was dark, of course, really dark, and the shooter on the dam must not be able to see in the dark. So it was one of Ross’s. It was a weird convoluted way of deducing that he hadn’t just been shot by the Avengers, but Clint was already too far away to realize it.

He took another breath and a terrible pain jolted him again, flaring in his chest like the sting of hunger, or the tightness of tears—only hundredfold, thousandfold, _billionfold._

He could still actually hear, but he couldn’t process what he was hearing, so it amounted to the same. Shock had gotten the better of him, but a bone-deep, full-body pain was struggling to be felt underneath. Not that there was any hurry. He had an eternity left before he actually died. When he breathed again, though, agony pinned him to the ground and _clenched_ through his entire body.

He started losing his sight. He didn’t want to lose his sight, like he’d lost his ears and his legs already—he wanted to see.

And he wanted to get up. He wanted to help. Because Bruce was alone, now, and if the shadows on the dam caught him, they would find another way to break him. Perhaps Betty Ross had survived for them. Perhaps Bruce was already trapped again. Hulk had wanted to run and God, Clint should have let him, he should have let him, he should have let him, he should have let him.

Thinking was beginning to be really hard, as though his brain was hitting walls in the dark, running in circles on predefined patterns. Clint had been shot before, but not like this. It had always been a limb, and his training had helped him get over the shock, get up, get running, keep moving. Perhaps he should have gotten over this as well. But really, even when you live in a worlds of gods and monsters, even when you fight giant ants before breakfast and Sentries after dinner, no human being can ever be prepared for three bullets in the stomach and chest.

Clint wanted to get up. He wanted to _move._ Bruce had no one. Clint was not much use but now Bruce had _no one._ Clint hoped he had turned into the Hulk and fled. He had closed his eyes, so he opened them to check; he realized, then, that only a few seconds had passed since the first shot.

Bruce was there, but Clint didn’t have time to actually look at him. As though a string had been cut, his head rolled on the side, black and white spots shifting in his vision. He wanted to look at Bruce, he wanted to see him, so _much,_ before he—but he couldn’t keep his head straight.

He couldn’t muster the strength to do it. It was all seeping away. His gaze, or what was left of it, was irresistibly drawn to the darkness in the corner of the room—a darkness so deep and so solid it looked as though it opened on a much darker, much wider space.

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... how about that weather, uh?


	12. In the dark

 

 

 

 

 

Someone was yelling above him, but Clint felt as though he had been plunged underwater. Everything was vague and blurry. His sight came and went.

He was looking into the darkness.

There was a hand on his throat, a voice which tried not to quiver, calling him, but even though he knew it was probably Bruce, his head was just too heavy.

And he was so tired. It was as though the terrible weariness he’d dragged ever since that damn Christmas day had finally hit a critical threshold. All those times when he’d wanted to lie down and stop moving—he was doing it now. All those times when he should have been killed because of his carelessness, all this luck he’d used up. It was over now. He’d run out of luck. About time he stopped pretending, anyway. He couldn’t do this anymore. He couldn’t look Bruce in the eye. He was too ashamed, and he was too sorry, and there was nothing he could do anyway. They were in the middle of the mountains, where no plane could land; even if the Avengers appeared at this precise second, it was too late to save Clint Barton.

He hoped, with all his dying heart, that Betty Ross was fine, that she’d been taken care of, and that Bruce and her would meet again someday. Even though right now, the world was Ross’s. _Clint’s_ world was Ross’s. The general was taking it all away.

Clint felt a pang of pain when he realized he was _leaving_ Bruce. For good—he didn’t truly believe in an afterlife, and if there was one, he doubted he and the doctor would end up on the same floor.

Clint wanted to _see_ him, before Ross’s men took him away, or before Clint signed out, himself. He made a tremendous effort, but it was no use. He couldn’t move his head. He could see Bruce in the far, far corner of his eye, and he could hear Bruce’s voice, more and more frantic in his ears, and he knew he was calling him; and he thought that at least, Bruce had liked him, a little, and the thought comforted him in his bitter sea of cold regrets.

He tried to think about their time in Brooklyn, before Christmas; this was what he wanted to remember before the end. But he kept being jarred out of his thoughts by his unconscious efforts to listen to Bruce, to understand what he was saying, even though the tone of his voice didn’t leave much to doubt.

Then the doctor was ripped from Clint’s body and dragged away, and Clint was left alone.

 

He felt another pang of agony; and he didn’t know if it was because he’d made the mistake of breathing in again, or because Bruce had just been taken. _Hulk,_ he thought in despair, with the last fumes of his flickering self, _Hulk, help._ He would be glad to die if he died crushed by the big guy as he ran away. But nothing happened.

For a second, Clint thought it was over, as over as it would ever be.

But then Bruce came back into sight.

He’d gotten rid of his attackers in some way—probably scared them off—and he was kneeling again next to Clint and started calling him again, trying to get him to look at him. And Clint was so awfully glad he could have cried, because he was terrified to die alone, but on the other hand, he was sorry for Bruce, because it was useless, and maybe it would have been better for him to be taken away, so at least he wouldn’t have to watch Clint die. Bruce was speaking in a halted, gasping voice, and Clint managed to grasp the general meaning of it—Bruce was telling him to stay with him, of course, stay with him and look at him; and Clint wanted to, he really, really wanted to, but he was drifting more and more with each second, quietly dissolving into himself, shutting the lights one by one on his way out.

And that corner was really, really _dark._

Clint had fallen backwards with his right hand extended towards it, reaching out towards the shadow. He knew it would soon open to swallow him whole. He looked into the darkness, and then other shadows came back into the opposite corner of his eye, coming for Bruce; and it was all over, it was too late, it was over.

But then.

But then the darkness reached _back._

Clint understood little at the moment, but this he understood even less. The darkness was actually reaching back, pushing itself into solidness and taking shape, a hand of darkness fringed with bright purple, reaching out for him.

The hand clasped his in a tight, warm grip—it only had three fingers—and then Clint heard a voice, very close and very clear.

 

“Hold on, _mein Freund.”_

 

Something swift moved above him and wrapped itself around Bruce, without letting go of Clint; and then the darkness opened again, like an abyssal flower, and swallowed Clint just like he thought it would; and yet it was very different from what he’d imagined.

It felt like being ripped out from his own body. The darkness spiraled and spun into a whirlwind of purple and black, pangs of pink lightning flashing through nothingness with a strong smell of brimstone; it lasted for an impossible second of kaleidoscopic madness, and then the storm itself parted like shredding cloth, and Clint was sucked out of the darkness to land brutally on a smooth, grey surface.

Something collapsed on top of him and rolled off to the side.

It was Kurt Wagner.

His yellow eyes were half-open and unseeing, and a small rivulet of blood trickled out of his nose, following the curve of his blue lips. Clint stared at it, unable to do anything else.

“No,” someone was saying.

Clint’s shock was fading if he could hear again; but it only meant he was going to die faster. He heard a metallic jangle next to him and something made of glass shattered on the floor.

“No—no— _no—”_

Clint’s sight was going once more. This time, it didn’t come back, and he soon found himself in complete darkness again; but this obscurity was all his. He also became aware of a terrible, all-encompassing pain, but he was already too disconnected from his body and the agony itself felt numbed.

“No—”

He was being moved. He felt his warm blood stick to the floor and smear on it under the weight of his body. The whole room smelled of brimstone and butchered flesh.

“Clint—Clint—no—I can’t let you die.”

Bruce’s voice was a mess of gasps but it also had a desperate, fearless ring to it, as though he had nothing left to lose, and it was more frightening than anything Clint had ever heard. “Clint—I can’t let you die—I can’t let you _die.”_

There was something pushing through his right arm and Clint whined a little, surprised that so small a pain could make him react when his entire body was basically a giant scream of muffled agony.

“Clint I’m sorry—I’m so sorry—I’m so sorry—I can’t let you die. I can’t. I _can’t.”_

Clint took a deep, hoarse breath, and it hurt so much he wished he was already dead.

“Forgive me—God, forgive me, Clint, forgive me, I’m so sorry, I’m—so sorry—”

Bruce was sobbing now. “I can’t let you _die.”_

And then something rushed into Clint’s veins, and his world turned to absolute _hell._

He’d thought he’d been in pain before, but it was nothing compared with what he was going through right now. He wanted to scream, but there was no air left in his lungs, so he took a deep breath—it hurt even more, but he needed to scream, so he forced it down his lungs and he _screamed,_ so hard it rang in his own ears and nearly deafened him. His blood was boiling—and it was _not a fucking metaphor,_ his blood was actually _boiling_ inside his veins, he could feel the bubbles distorting his skin and blood vessels, and he screamed again, mad with pain, inarticulate and raw; he begged for it to stop, to stop, and he wanted to die, he wanted to die, anything but that, anything, but that, _anything but that_ oh God please make it stop please make it _stop—_ but _it_ was seeping inside him, taking hold of him whole; and all of a sudden, his muscles clenched so _hard_ they broke his goddamn bones in their constricting, crushing grip; he _felt_ them break, all of them, in his arms and legs, and his ribs gone in splinters piercing his skin and lungs, and his fucking spine which _snapped_ like a twig—and _it_ devoured him body and soul like an all-consuming flame, and horror blew his mind away in a roar of pure agony.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my.


	13. Titans

 

 

 

 

 

Clint’s eyes blinked open; and just like that, he was awake.

He threw the sheets away to get up—and his legs gave out under him. He crashed into a steel table and tried to get a hold of something, but he didn’t succeed—the table just wheeled away—and it was probably for the best seeing as he was in what looked very much like an infirmary, but a weird one, with lots of sharp metal and glass items lying around.

 _“Fuck’s_ sake,” someone exclaimed.

Someone hurried next to him and calloused hands grabbed his shoulders. “The hell are you doing, Barton?”

“I—” Clint said, dizzy and shocked, instinctively clutching at the strong arms holding him. He blinked several times, but what he saw made no sense. _“Logan?”_

Wolverine indeed, in all his hairy glory. He had the weirdest look on his face—half-concerned and half-exasperated. The concerned part was entirely new.

“My—my legs…” Clint stammered.

“They’re working. See?”

Logan grabbed Clint’s knee and squeezed it hard; Clint felt it, and his muscles flinched in answer, and it was the most wonderful thing he’d ever felt.

Still, his legs would not support his weight, and now that he thought about it, the rest of his body was equally weak—he thought he’d been clutching at Logan in a death grip, but his fingers were barely dimpling the skin.

“Didn’t I… didn’t my spine…”

Logan huffed and got up, helping Clint to his feet, then onto the bed. He tried to force him down, but Clint shook his head, eyes wide. “No, I don’t want to lie down—I don’t want to lie down!”

The last time he’d laid down, something awful had happened, even though he had trouble remembering what at the moment.

“Alright,” Logan said, in as soothing a tone as he could manage. “Alright.”

Clint stared at him, panting. He slowly let go of his arms, and Logan let go of him in turn.

“Why,” Clint began, puzzled. “Why are you being _nice?”_

Logan snorted softly, but he did look sympathetic. “I know what it’s like to go through the grinder and back, bub. Take a minute.”

Clint blinked. “Wow,” he said, low. “If I’m dead and this is heaven, I want out.”

Logan snorted again, louder, and it was enough to convince Clint he was very much alive. He looked around him, trying to catch his breath and get his bearings.

“Are we…” he asked after a while. Outside the glass door was the cargo area. “We’re on the Bus.”

“Yeah, we turned the lab into a secondary infirmary,” Logan said.

Clint frowned at him. “Secondary?”

“Don’t get your panties in a bunch, princess. We had customers for the primary.”

It took Clint a second to understand; then he paled. “Who’s—” he was out of breath again. “Who’s in the primary?”

“Kurt Wagner and Betty Ross.”

“Are they…”

Logan stared at him and Clint knew that no, they were not.

“You almost killed them both,” Logan said quietly.

He crossed his arms and leaned against the wall. “You ruptured Betty Ross’s trachea. Missed her vocal cords by an inch. Hank McCoy said it was a very neat job.”

There was nothing Clint could say to that, so he only stammered, “And Kurt?”

Logan’s jaw did a weird clenching thing. “In a coma.”

He pulled out his lighter and flicked it open, stared at the small flame for a second, then snapped it back shut.

“He jumped more than fifty miles to get to you in time, and then fifty miles back. Apparently, that’s not something you do.”

Clint felt nauseous. He remembered Kurt’s sharp, bright smile, and his firm grip as he pulled Clint out of the nightmare.

“I barely know him,” he said, wanly.

Logan said nothing.

“Why was he even there?” Clint went on. “How did he even _know?”_

“He was on the team Xavier sent us, along with Hank McCoy. We were sweeping the area to find you, and you blinked on the radar the very second we heard the first shot through your coms. You were way too far but Wagner just jumped—there was no stopping him.”

“My coms,” Clint said, slowly.

He said nothing for a long moment. So he’d forgotten to turn them off. Did that mean they’d heard his entire conversation with Bruce?

_Bruce._

“Where’s Bruce?” he asked.

Logan didn’t blink. “He asked to be handed to SHIELD, after—”

Clint’s blood drew back like a low tide. Logan straightened up and gave him a strange, tense look. “Calm down,” he said. “We didn’t do it.”

 _"Where_ is he,” Clint repeated, breathless. “Tell me. Tell me where.”

“He’s still on the plane, Barton. Tone it the fuck down.”

Clint clenched his hands on the sheets and realized his strength had returned. He got up and barely wobbled. “I’m going to see him—”

Logan grabbed his shoulders and pushed him back on the bed. “No.”

Clint blinked at him, hysterical laughter bubbling in his throat. “No?” he asked, incredulous. _“No?”_

“Calm _down,”_ Logan repeated in a growl. “You’re not allowed to leave the lab.”

“Yeah? You wanna tell me why?”

“Just fucking back off.”

Clint shook his head and stepped forwards.

“I don’t think—”

 _Snikt_ and Logan’s adamantium claws were two inches from Clint’s face.

“I _said,”_ he growled, _“back off.”_

Clint went very, very still.

Logan had never drawn—would never draw—his claws at Clint Barton. His human ass simply wasn’t worth the trouble. Logan was really acting weird—had been from the beginning. First this ill-suiting gentleness, and now this strung-up state, like a wild animal, like Clint was _dangerous._ Likely to snap at any second. But there wasn’t… there wasn’t…

…there…

Clint opened his mouth, closed it.

He looked down at his hands.

The cuts—the cuts on his arm, from the broken glass in Zurich. They were gone.

And then his gaze wandered off and he saw the blood—the smears of dried blood on the floor, brown stains like a disease on the white linoleum of the lab.

“I’m—”

Only then did he actually remember the first shot. The second shot. The third shot. He remembered drowning in his own blood.

He should be _dead._ He should be dead. He had talked about that little fact with Logan a second ago. Why hadn’t it puzzled him until now? Why hadn’t Logan mentioned it—as though he didn’t want to draw Clint’s attention on it?

 

 _Clint,_ Bruce sobbed in his memory, desperate and terrified. _I’m so sorry. Forgive me. God, forgive me._

“He—”

“Yeah,” Logan said, in a low, grim voice. “He gave you his blood.”

He looked ready to snap the moment Clint so much as batted an eyelid. “A whole lot of it.”

Clint kept staring at his hands. His ears were buzzing and the ground suddenly seemed very, very far down.

“But,” he said, and it sounded like it came from a great distance. “But his blood is toxic.”

Logan lowered his hands, but didn’t draw his claws back in.

“It’s toxic to drink,” he said. “But Banner hooked himself directly to your veins and pumped you full of the stuff. A nasty brown goo it was.”

Clint looked up at him. Logan’s stare was hard and decided. And his claws were still out.

“We sealed the lab,” he said. “None of us is getting out until we get to SHIELD’s containment facility.”

That was why Logan had been appointed to be Clint’s nurse. Whatever happened, he was the most likely to survive it.

“But it healed me,” Clint stammered. “It _healed_ me. I’m okay.”

“Yeah, shit got you your spine and main organs back. But that just means it caught on. That just means the reaction ain’t gonna stop.”

“The reaction,” Clint said. He couldn’t even phrase it like a question.

“Yeah. Take a look at yourself, Barton.”

There was a mirror on the wall. Clint swallowed, then turned his head to look, mind blank.

His eyes were green.

A bright, dazzling, _radioactive_ green, which made him look haunted and empty inside. As he looked, he thought he could see the color spread to the hair-thin veins in the whites of his eyes.

The humming in his ears got louder. _Radioactive._ That was the color of his eyes. The color of the Hulk. Clint had read Bruce’s files. He knew his blood was basically a nuclear waste culture fluid. And now it was in Clint Barton’s body.

He looked back to Logan with those alien eyes. The adamantium claws seemed to grow another inch.

“I’m not radioactive,” Clint told him. “I don’t think—I’ve had radiation poisoning once, I know how it feels. I’m not dangerous.”

“That’s not for you to say,” Logan growled. “And I’m gonna be real clear here, Barton. We don’t know what’s going to happen to you. McCoy doesn’t think you’re going to last the night—he didn’t say it out loud, but I know. Drew and Romanov think you’re turning into another Hulk. Either way, we gotta get you to a containment cell, so until then, you’re gonna stay here and behave.”

“I—,” Clint said, but words failed him.

Compassion flickered through Logan’s eyes. “Look, I’ve been there,” he said. “I _know.”_

He lowered his claws another inch.

“I guess you were bound to be fucked up some day. I honestly didn’t think you’d be lucky enough to stay human this long.”

Clint gaped at him. “Lucky?”

Logan let out a contemptuous growl.

“Oh, _shut up!”_ he barked.

Clint startled.

“This is why I could never stand you fucking around with your goddamn bow,” Logan spat. “You wanted to be a hero, that it? So _you_ picked this life— you _picked_ it, while _we_ never had a choice. _You_ were normal, you were _lucky,_ and yet you chose to come here with us! So don’t you go complaining _now.”_

“Whoa—wait—hold on a fucking second,” Clint said, dumbstruck. “Where the hell is this all coming from? You’re jealous of _me?”_

“Who fucking wouldn’t be?” Logan snapped. “People like you—they own the goddamn _world,_ in case you haven’t noticed. You’ve never been hunted—”

 _“I’ve_ never been hunted?” Clint yelled, stepping forward. “And what the fuck do you mean, _people like me?_ Oh, I have no powers, so I’m automatically having tea-parties with the fucking WSC?”

“That’s not the goddamn _point,”_ Logan shouted, shoving him back. “The point is, you were normal, and I had to watch you _waste_ it, all that time—you had a chance, and you _blew it!”_

“No,” Clint said, choking on his rage, “I was happy _once—_ and yeah, you have no idea how much I fucking _blew it,_ but none of it had anything to do with me being normal or not. And if I was still normal right now, I’d be dead!”

“Banner turned you into a monster.”

“Banner saved my goddamn _life,”_ Clint hissed, “and you can keep hating yourself in a corner because I’m going to fucking see him, and you can’t stop m—”

Logan pinned Clint to the wall and stuck two of his claws on each side of his neck. “You’re not seeing clear, Barton,” he growled in his face. “You’re not going anywhere.”

“Yeah?” Clint panted feverishly—and his vision turned _green._

He jumped up and hit Logan square in the chest with both his feet, ripping him off the wall and sending him crashing across the room, knocking down trailers and tables on his way. Clint slid down on the floor and took a deep breath, energy thrumming throughout his entire body. His heart was incredibly loud in his ears. _So this is how it feels,_ he thought, giddy.

He felt mostly drunk, to be honest. Invincible.

He straightened up, reeling a little. On the other side of the room, Logan was still down. He’d hit the reinforced wall face-first and his neck was at an awkward angle. His right hand groped among the medical supplies, claws still out, and he snarled between his teeth as though willing his healing factor to work faster; but he couldn’t do much more.

 Clint laughed at him. Yeah, he felt really, really good all of a sudden. “Don’t piss me off,” he said, with a mad grin. “You wouldn’t like me when I’m pissed off.”

He turned to the sealed door and tried to open it; when it resisted, he slammed it open so hard the lock was ripped off the frame. Clint took another deep breath, head spinning. Green started to creep at the edges of his vision again as adrenaline flared through his entire system. He looked at his hand—his vision was blurry, things coming in and out of focus, vibrating with heat—then tightened it into a fist, and looked up. For a second, he wasn’t sure where to go; but then it became obvious—where would they put Banner, if not in the cell?

Another flame of green fury washed through him at the thought. Fuck them. Fuck them _all._ He was going to the cell. He was coming for Bruce. He had had enough. He was done—he was so done.

He was _angry._

 

 

 

 

 

 

           

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well...


	14. In the Green

 

 

 

 

 

Clint stepped out of the lab and into the cargo area. There was a high-pitched ringing in his ears, and he could feel his own heart pounding away, so hard it physically hurt. He took a step, then another.

Suddenly, he wobbled and leaned against the spiraling stairs. He was about to go again when he caught sight of his distorted reflection in the polished steel. His eyes were still glowing green, a pulsing, mean green.

And suddenly he thought, _Bruce._

Logan had described Bruce’s blood; he had told him Bruce had asked to be imprisoned. This meant Logan had been there to see Bruce bent over Clint’s dying body, and he’d probably yelled at him, dragged him away, _the fuck are you doing? The fuck have you done?_ A monster, he’d said. _Banner turned you into a monster._ And everyone else probably thought so.

Even Bruce.

Bruce hated the Hulk so _much._ And now, he’d put this curse onto Clint. He had _asked_ to be imprisoned. How he must _loathe_ himself. But all he’d done was save Clint’s life—he’d saved… his life…

Clint shivered violently and reopened his eyes, panting. He caught sight of these toxic, glowing green eyes again, and this time, he felt scared. They’d sealed the lab to contain him. They’d sealed the lab, and Logan had volunteered to stay with him, because he was the only one Clint couldn’t hurt. And yet, Clint had hurt him—he’d actually _killed_ him— _again._

Maybe he _was_ a danger. Maybe he should go back. But it was too late—it was too late, right? If he really was toxic waste, the whole plane must be contaminated by now.

Would it hurt them, though? he thought frantically. Any of them—could they be hurt by something like this? Last time they’d dealt with gamma rays…

Clint suddenly blinked, sweat rolling down his temples. _Last time they’d dealt with gamma rays._

He let go of the handrail, but didn’t take the stairs; instead, he faced the other way and staggered across the cargo area to reach the lone Quinjet parked in a corner. He felt weird—he felt really weird now. He didn’t know whether he was gaining strength or losing it; maybe it was both, going up and down in a constant rollercoaster which started to make him sick. After what felt like an eternity, he grabbed the door handle and painfully opened it.

His legs gave out as he climbed inside and he collapsed on the hard floor of the aircraft. Okay—he had no strength left at all. But then he breathed in, breathed out, and pushed to get up again; and when he grabbed a flight harness to pull himself up, he _ripped_ it off the wall even though it was designed to resist air pressure changes.

Yeah. Strength comes and goes.

He was opening the first-aid kit when the door ground shut behind him. He stiffened but didn’t turn back—he knew it was Logan, but Logan would expect him to fight back and if Clint didn’t, maybe he’d get a minute, a minute which might save his ass.

“You little _shit,”_ Logan rasped.

Clint’s febrile hands found what he was looking for and he quickly turned it on. The device screeched as it came to life, then fell into a low hum, buzzing quietly between Clint’s hands. He turned and pointed it at Logan.

“The fuck is that, Barton?” Logan snorted, showing his teeth. “A laser gun?”

“It’s not a laser gun,” Clint panted.

He stared at the small screen, blinking the sweat out of his eyes.

“It’s a Geiger counter.”

Logan froze. His claws were still out.

Clint hesitated, then put the counter on the floor and pushed it towards Logan with his foot.

“Look.”

His teammate glared at him, but then he retracted the claws of his right hand, crouched down and picked it up. He stared at it for a long, excruciating minute.

“You’re throwing out gamma radiation,” he said between his teeth.

“Harmless levels,” Clint said in a pleading voice. “Hill put one of these on each Quinjet after the radioactive ants thing. If I was dangerous, it would glow red. Is it glowing red?”

It was a real question; all he could see was shades of green by now, and although he’d read the small numbers on the counter, he wasn’t a hundred percent sure he hadn’t been turned into human nuclear waste.

“It’s not,” Logan said reluctantly.

Clint closed his eyes. “God,” he murmured, head thumping against the wall.

“It doesn’t mean anything, Barton,” Logan said, although his anger from earlier was gone. “Get your ass back into the lab. You’re not stable—your radiation levels could spike up anytime.”

“Then bring me to Banner,” Clint said. “He’ll know what to do.”

Logan huffed, but didn’t move.

“Please,” Clint insisted. “It can’t hurt. And you just said you were pissed at me for wasting my chances. Help me not waste this one.”

Logan rolled his eyes. “Seriously, Barton.”

“Come on, man. I’m sorry I killed you.”

“You’re not stable,” Logan repeated, firmly grabbing him by the arm. “And you don’t know how long you slept. We’re too close to New York to risk anything.”

 _“New York?”_ Clint repeated, puzzled.

Only then did he realize they were not flying—he couldn’t hear the engines purring beneath him like he usually did. “I thought—”

“Stark resurfaced,” Logan said, pulling him up forcefully, “and he’s not alone. The Mandarin’s right out there, too. We’re not sure what’s happening but a lot of shit’s catching on fire. We dove head-first into it—and that means we can’t deal with you right now.”

He reopened the door of the Quinjet, holding Clint in a bone-crushing grip. “We can’t face two crisis at once.”

“So you’re just going to lock me away in a sealed lab,” Clint said, struggling back. “And that’s alright in your book?”

Logan stared at him, and Clint stared back.

 

*

 

Shit, everything was _green._

Logan had kept the Geiger counter with him and although it was still quietly humming, it wasn’t signaling anything worrying yet. Clint cast a wary glance towards the lab, but Logan helped him limp towards the stairs.

“The only reason I’m doing this,” he grumbled, “is because you broke the lab door anyway.”

Clint almost laughed and grabbed the handrail to pull himself up on the first step. Man, this plane could use an elevator. Why was everything always coming down to elevators in the end?

Clint huffed another laugh when he realized Logan was actually helping him go up.

“What?” Logan growled.

“Don’t worry,” Clint said between two gasping breaths. “I won’t tell anyone you’re a big softie.”

“You’re drunk.”

“I feel drunk,” Clint admitted. He suddenly lost his balance and almost crashed against the handrail as the world toppled over; he panicked for a second, but then he realized it wasn’t him—the entire plane had swayed on its axles and Logan had been thrown down as well. An explosion echoed outside.

“The fuck?” Clint yelled.

“I _told_ you,” Logan started, but then he just cursed between his teeth and climbed back up. “Hurry up, Barton, we can’t stay here.”

Another burst of strength spiked up through Clint’s body and he climbed up the last flight of stairs in one breath. Still gripping the handrail tight, he didn’t wait for Logan and staggered towards the cell. His body was doing absolutely ridiculous things—he felt like he’d drunk a gallon of the strongest, blackest coffee, but also like he was drowning in morphine. Sometimes one, sometimes the other, sometimes both at once.

The plane was huge, and the cell was on the other end of it. Clint dragged himself forward, trying not to pay attention to the surging and ebbing of his own blood, as though he had an ocean inside him, rocking back and forth. Twice more, the plane itself rocked on its side and Clint wondered what was _happening_ out there—he kept hearing muffled explosions and screams.

And then suddenly, his knees buckled and he fell down. Someone hurried behind him and grabbed his shoulder to help him up. “Barton, not here.”

“What’s happening?” Clint said, wobbling.

“I have no fucking idea,” Logan spat. “Get up.”

Clint couldn’t get up—he was drained—he couldn’t. But he could look up, and when he did, he _saw._

He was right next to the infirmary. He could see, through the glass door, Betty Ross lying on her back, as pale as the sheets. She was wearing a medical eye-patch and her throat was wrapped in bandages.

Next to her, in the other bed, was Kurt Wagner, hooked to several machines, an IV, and a ventilator. His skin was a very dark blue against the blank bed. His eyes were closed, his mouth slightly ajar, revealing the tip of sharp white teeth.

“F—” Clint spat, and he got up again with a tremendous effort.

He took a few painful steps, feeling like his entire body was in flux; Logan helped him, almost half-carried him, but then, Clint came near a window—and actually saw what was happening out there.

The Bus had landed on what looked like a floating rig. And a lot of shit, as Logan had said, was catching on fire. There were something like two dozen Iron Men dashing through the darkened skies like rockets—and they were being torn to shreds. Clint actually saw it happen—his sight, though veiled by a thick green cloud, was as sharp as ever, and he saw a sturdy armor being ripped apart by what looked suspiciously like _fire people._ Tony himself was nowhere to be seen, but Clint thought he’d seen a shield—Steve?

But it was gone in the blink of an eye, and the fire storm raged on, blazing brighter and fiercer with each minute.

“God,” Clint panted.

He leaned against the wall. Logan came near him again. This was why he was so tense, this was why he’d snapped at Clint—he wanted to go out there, to _help,_ but he must stay here and play nurse for the irradiated idiot.

But this time, Clint knew how to be a hero.

He pushed Logan away. “Go,” he gasped.

Logan huffed in exasperation. “Barton, now’s not the—”

“Just fucking _go,”_ Clint barked. “You’re right—I’m a burden—a fucking waste—but I can take care of myself. At the very least. I always did. I’ll be fine.”

“Barton—”

“No, you were right—you were right,” Clint gasped. “I brought this on myself—you were right.”

His strength began ebbing again and he had to muster all his power not to sink to his knees. In Logan’s hands, the Geiger counter let out a shrill, piercing sound.

“Fuck!” Logan hissed. “Barton, you’re spiking up!”

“Go—please—go,” Clint said, teeth chattering. “There’s nothing you can do. I’ll go into the cell. It’ll be fine. Whatever happens to me—I won’t hurt anybody. It’ll be fine. I’ll get there, just go help them, just _go!”_

He yelled those last words just as another explosion shook the plane; Logan hissed a curse, looked at Clint like he wanted to say something, then suddenly turned away and ran back to the cargo area.

Clint sighed in relief and let his knees give out. He slid down the wall; his vision was flooding with green, drowning everything out.

“I’ll be alright,” he rasped. “I promised—I’ll be alright.”

And he got up again—it was the single most difficult thing he’d ever done, but he got up again, and started walking towards the cell, actually walking, obsessed with the dark door at the end of the hallway. He didn’t even remember at the moment why it was so _important_ he got into this room. He only knew he would do it if it was the last thing he ever did—which was pretty likely by now. McCoy had been right. He wouldn’t last the night—he wouldn’t last the _hour._

He reached the door at long last and grabbed the handle not to collapse. Gritting his teeth, he unlocked the door which opened under him so suddenly that he crashed onto the floor, in the darkness of the interrogation room. He crawled forward a little; the neon lights at the bottom of the walls were turned to the lowest setting, and the atmosphere was gloomy and obscure; to him, it all just looked like a green swamp.

But then the door shut back behind him, and he found the strength to look up, shuddering, teeth chattering, unable to focus.

That was it—he’d made it—he was in the interrogation room.

Except Bruce wasn’t there.

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *ducks out of the way*


	15. Backstage

 

 

 

 

 

No, Bruce wasn’t there.

But _Hulk_ was.

He was curled up on himself, giant hands hiding his giant face, and absolutely unmoving like a statue of himself. In Clint’s green world, he looked almost grey.

He took a gasping breath, then held it again. It made no sense. Hulk—Hulk _moved._ Hulk smashed and roared and ran. He didn’t curl up in a corner like a scared child. Why had Bruce changed, anyway?

“Hulk,” Clint said, feebly.

His lips felt bloodless and cracked. His blood seemed to be drying from the inside, slowing down in his veins, clogging them bit by bit. Clint painfully tried to crawl forward, but at this point, all he could do was grovel.

“Hulk, please...”

Hulk only buried his face deeper into his hands. He didn’t want to look.

“Go away,” he let out.

“Oh, Bruce,” Clint murmured.

He stopped crawling, gasping for breath. “Is it—is that why you changed? Because of me? Because you couldn’t stand it?”

“Go away,” Hulk repeated. He added in a very miserable, unconvincing tone, “Hulk smash.”

Clint laughed a hoarse, empty laugh. “Nah,” he said. “I don’t think I can go anywhere right now.” He flopped down, and rolled on his back. “But it’s not your fault,” he said, staring at the ceiling. “And it’s not Bruce’s, either. Can you tell him that? Is he awake inside?”

Hulk didn’t move, but he mumbled, “Hiding.”

“Yeah,” Clint breathed. “Figured.”

Another loud explosion shook the plane. Clint stayed on his back, chest heaving. It was excruciating to know that his friends were fighting out there while he could do nothing to help. His sight was flooding with green to the point that he was blinded by it—as though paint had been poured all over his face. He blinked, but it wouldn’t go away.

“That’s what Bruce does, right?” Clint rasped. “That’s the funny thing about him. I could have died on my own. But he tried to save me. He did save me. But now I’m dying again and he made it so it would be his fault.”

He coughed a little. “I would’ve died either way.”

“You die because of me,” Hulk said.

“Big guy,” Clint panted, “I’d take you over a bullet any day.”

Hulk said nothing. This was what he was, really. Not a green rage monster. Not a superhero, either. Just a lost creature born out of fear and sorrow and anger, to protect Bruce Banner from the agony of this damned world.

Clint extended his hand behind him, reaching out, like he’d reached out for the darkness in the dam house. “C’mon, don’t leave me hanging. Don’t leave me here. Please.”

He waited for a long, blurry minute. Then Hulk’s hand came over him, like a blanket, and softly wrapped around him to take him away. Clint smiled; he couldn’t see anything, but he could feel the big guy’s almost painful care as he lifted him to bring him closer.

“You’re getting so good at this,” Clint mumbled. “Remember the first time? In the sewers? Man, what a fuck-up that was.”

Slowly, carefully, Hulk set him in his lap, and it was dark and warm just like in Clint’s dreams. Clint could hear his heartbeat. He tucked himself in this narrow, soft space, and closed his eyes. Hulk closed his arms around him, and it was the safest Clint had ever felt.

The world was green behind his eyelids.

“I miss Brooklyn,” Clint murmured. “You know? It was the…” He hesitated, but hell, he was dying anyway. “It was the happiest time of my life. You tell him that.”

Hulk held him tighter, and Clint really felt like a puppet in his hands. But it didn’t hurt.

“It’s not you,” he drawled. “See? You learned how to hold people. You can be good. It’s not your fault. Remember what I told Bruce that day, in the sewers?” He curled up against Hulk’s chest and sighed heavily. “Blame the guy who shot you for shooting you. And you didn’t shoot me. Bruce didn’t shoot me. You both tried to help.”

He breathed in, breathed out. He felt good now. He felt all good. “Hey, I know all about fucking up while trying to do the right thing. I’m never going to be mad at you over this.”

Hulk let out a huffed, weary, bitter laugh, and it was such a human sound that Clint felt deeply sad.

“Please,” he murmured. “Hulk. Please.”

Hulk’s big hand covered him again and pressed him a little against his chest. Clint did his best to hug back, and they stayed like this for a minute.

“Goodbye,” Hulk murmured eventually.

Clint closed his eyes.

“See ya, big guy.”

And Hulk, very slowly, began to go away.

Clint felt him shift and shrink under him, until there was only Bruce left. Clint wrapped his arms around him as soon as he could, and buried his face into the crook of his neck, just like he’d dreamed about it so many times. This wasn’t like the dam house—his violent despair was gone; he wasn’t thinking about what he should and shouldn’t do. He was just glad Bruce was here.

Outside, the explosions had stopped.

Bruce began to tense in his hold, very slowly, then all at once—he _braced_ against Clint and tried to break free, but he was too weak. He scrambled against him, breathing faster and faster, heart pounding so hard Clint could feel it; and then he sort of snapped and let out a raw, hoarse sound, which was the most painful thing Clint had ever heard.

“Bruce,” he said softly. “It’s a—”

 _“Don’t tell me it’s alright!”_ Bruce screamed.

He weakly hit Clint’s chest, then took another hoarse, gasping breath. “Don’t you _dare,”_ he panted, “it’s not—it’s _not—”_

 “Hey,” Clint breathed, shaking him. “Did you hear what I said just before?”

Bruce didn’t answer. He was shuddering wildly in his grip.

“You saved me,” Clint repeated. “You saved me. You’re saving me right now.”

“I didn’t—” Bruce choked.

For a second, it seemed like the words would just stay stuck in his throat, like he was actually, physically choking on them, convulsing without a sound. Then he let out a distorted wail of agony, and he started sobbing, broken, miserable sobs which wracked his skinny frame.

“Clint,” he moaned, scowling as burning tears rolled down his face. “Oh _Clint.”_

“It’s okay,” Clint said. “Let it out. You’ve earned it, man.”

“Clint, I’m so—I’m so s-sorry,” Bruce gasped. “I was so _fucking_ selfish—I had no right—I couldn’t stop myself—I couldn’t—I’m so—” but he was sobbing so hard he couldn’t say more.

Clint held him tight, so tight, and felt again how skinny he was, how terribly he’d been tortured, all this time when he could do nothing to fight back.

“Hey,” he said. “You _really_ need to eat something.”

He slowly ruffled Bruce’s curls. “How about pancakes? I remember you loved those, back in Brooklyn. You never said, but it was obvious. With lots of syrup.”

He rubbed Bruce’s back. “Also, uh, in other news, I think Betty will be alright. I saw her in the infirmary—she looked stable. And they removed the kill switch. She just needs lots of rest now, she’ll be fine.”

Bruce didn’t answer. He’d started shaking again, bracing away from Clint and yet clutching at him in a death grip which would probably leave bruises. Clint knew that feeling—he’d behaved exactly like this, himself, back there in the dam house. Not allowed to get any closer, and yet so desperate for it.

“I’m not dying, Bruce,” Clint murmured into his hair.

Bruce frantically shook his head.

“I’m not dying,” Clint repeated quietly.

“I—I—I _irradiated—”_

“Yeah, I was pretty irradiated for a second,” Clint said. “Kinda like chemo, though, ya know? Fight evil with evil. Just a side effect of having my organs and spine grown back, though. Won’t complain.”

“But—you’re—”

“No,” Clint said yet again, more firmly this time. _“Remember,_ Bruce. Remember what happened last time.”

Bruce said nothing, but his violent sobs gradually subsided until he was just shaking soundlessly in Clint’s arms.

“Last time,” Clint whispered. “With those damn ants. You leeched the radiation out of me, because you’d just changed back, like, fifteen minutes ago.”

He pulled back a little. They were so close their noses were touching. Bruce gaped at him with wide, desperate eyes.

“And this time?” Clint breathed. “I was here for the whole process. Hulk turned back into you with me right in his arms.”

And yes; for once, just this once, when he’d needed it the most, his stupid idea had worked. All the green was gone from his vision.

He could see again.

“Okay, so, that was kind of a reckless plan,” he said, looking down. Then he smiled, and looked back up. “But it worked. So are you going to stop crying now?”

Bruce said nothing. He looked physically unable to speak.

 Clint laughed a little. “No, that was mean,” he murmured. He pulled Bruce close again, buried his hand in his hair. “Cry if you want, man. Seriously. Sometimes you just have to.”

He tightened his embrace. “Happened to me on Christmas day,” he admitted under his breath. “Didn’t really feel good at the time, but now I feel better. Real better.”

Bruce took a deep, gasping breath, clutching tight at his shirt. Clint closed his eyes and held him close, sighing out in emphatic relief; and he knew that for once, for once, he was exactly where he should be.

They just sat there for a long, long time, pressed against each other.

“Feels good,” Clint breathed. “God, this feels so good, you have no idea.”

Bruce let out a strange sound, half-laugh, half-sob. He pulled back a little, although he was still trembling very hard and clutching at Clint’s blood-soaked shirt.

“Clint,” he said, fighting to keep a steady voice. “It’s not… how it works. I might be able to absorb the excess radiation—but this time, the source is right in your veins, and the Hulk—he’s active, he’s—he’s—he’s resilient. He’ll _grow._ And I can’t be sure we didn’t just delay… I can’t promise…”

“You don’t need to promise anything,” Clint said, ruffling his hair again. “I don’t care what happens. Alright?”

Bruce screwed his eyes shut, but Clint shook him a little. “Hey,” he said. “No. Look at me. You saved my life.”

“I was selfish,” Bruce said between his teeth. “There’s no excuse for what I did.”

“Fuck that sideways with a goddamn cactus. Look, I’m no scientist,” Clint insisted. “I’m just a dumb sniper. So yeah, maybe I’m gonna die, and maybe it will even be because of your blood. Or _maybe_ I’ll get run over by a car, or I’ll get myself killed on the field, or maybe I’ll even die of old age in fifty years. But no matter what happens, you gotta remember that without you, I would’ve died _sooner._ That’s a fact and whatever comes next—it can never change that.”

Bruce slowly looked up at him.

Then he smiled. It was a very sad, incredibly tired smile.

Clint smiled back, a bit uncertain. “What?” he asked softly.

Bruce closed his eyes and pressed his forehead against his. “Nothing,” he said. “You’re still the same. Always the only one who…”

He sighed and said in a breath that sounded like a sob, “I missed you so damn _much.”_

Clint’s throat suddenly felt very dry. Bruce was so close that their lips hovered inches from each other. Clint just wanted to sink into it and forget everything else—the pull was physical, painful, _demanding._ But no. He wasn’t going to do it. Even though he could feel Bruce’s breath on his lips—he _wasn’t_ going to do it.

“Are you going to…?” Bruce breathed, eyes still closed.

And Clint miserably prayed for strength, because this was what Bruce had asked him just before _that_ time against the cold window, and Clint had just told himself he would be reasonable but God, it was so hard to resist.

“I’m—” he said, and then he huffed a self-deprecating laugh. “Nah, don’t worry. I can behave when I have to.”

He started to pull back, with a painful effort—but then Bruce stopped him, gripping his shoulders.

“When you have to?” he repeated.

He opened his eyes to look at him. His gaze was unreadable.

“Well—yeah,” Clint said, suddenly unsure again. “Is it… it’s not okay, right? I mean, what with…” He couldn’t bring himself to say her name. “I never meant—I would never ask you t—”

Bruce pulled him close and kissed him.

Something fizzed in Clint’s brain and he went completely still. Bruce’s warm, soft lips made him weaker than all the gamma radiation in the world, as though he was now absorbing his will and strength. After a few unresponsive seconds, Bruce gingerly pulled back, looking suddenly very unsure.

Clint gaped at him. “I—” he stammered. “I thought—”

But as he was speaking, his hands were already going up to frame Bruce’s face and Clint cut himself off mid-sentence as he kissed back.

All at once. Suddenly all at _once._ Bruce let out a small sound against his lips, like a moan of relief, and Clint _lost it._ He crushed his mouth on Bruce’s, so rough and desperate it couldn’t really be called a kiss, fitted their lips together, invaded his mouth to taste him, to feel him here; he ran his fingers through his hair, pressed flush against him, and when he they parted for breath, he gasped, _“Bruce—”_ and he kissed him again, wet and warm, and sealed their mouths together, stayed there, gripped tight so they couldn’t part again, never again, and when he felt Bruce surging back almost more feverishly, and holding him in return, he thought dizzily that it would be okay, to die now, to die like this, because he was pretty sure he couldn’t get any happier anyway.

Bruce shuddered in his arms, and Clint pulled back to smile at him, breathless and giddy, feeling drunker than he’d felt under the effect of the gamma rays. Bruce still looked wan, and sick, and shaken, but he tried to smile back.

Then another powerful explosion shook the plane, and they both instinctively looked up.

“…Clint,” Bruce murmured. “Is it—what’s happening out there?”

“Shit,” Clint breathed.

He jumped to his feet. “Come on!”

He took Bruce’s hand in a tight grip, and they both hurried out of the cell.

The command room was empty; the screen showed nothing but a blaze of fire—literally nothing but flames, huge flames twisting in strange spirals around the plane like fire-colored sheets dancing in the wind. There was no sign of the enemy, or of the Avengers.

“Can’t we reach them?” Bruce asked anxiously.

“Spare coms,” Clint mumbled, looking everywhere, “spare coms, spare coms—the radio!” he suddenly exclaimed. “That way.”

They turned away and ran out of the room to reach the cockpit. Despite everything, Clint noticed, once again, the chafing of the carpet under his bare feet; and he remembered that Bruce was barefoot too, that he was feeling the same thing right now.

The cockpit was empty, and the giant flames looked even fierier out the windshield. Clint was actually starting to get a bit hot. He sat in the pilot seat and put on the headphones.

 _“—plane’s gonna explode and we still got four people in there!”_ Natasha was yelling. _“Get past the flames!”_

 _“I’m fucking trying!”_ Logan bellowed back.

“Bruce, buckle up,” Clint panted, then he turned his mike on. “Hey, guys?”

An astonished silence answered him.

“Would it help if I got this plane outta here?”

He was already flicking the switches and setting his feet on the rudder bar as Bruce strapped himself in the copilot seat. The whole Bus whirred and hummed around him.

 _“Barton.”_ It was Logan—he sounded completely dumbstruck.

 _“Clint—”_ Jessica began.

 _“Hawkeye, get out of here, it’s gonna blow!”_ Steve yelled.

“Copy that,” Clint mumbled.

He tightened his grip on the commands, pulled a lever—and blasted off, vertically in the night skies, far away from the blaze which wrapped tendrils of fire around the plane as it got away.

People yelled and whooped on the coms, and it wasn’t just them—Clint could hear Tony, and Natasha swearing in Russian, and more people he didn’t know.

 _“You prick,”_ Logan mumbled, and Clint grinned, because he knew a compliment when he heard one.

He exhaled deeply, then leaned back in his seat, climbing higher and higher in the night. The blaze flickered down below like a lost star.

“So how are things down there?” he asked.

 _“My awesome girlfriend took care of it all, thank you very much,”_ Tony said. _“I totally didn’t need your help.”_

 _“Don’t listen to him,”_ said a woman Clint didn’t know—Tony’s girlfriend? Like, Pepper Potts? _“Thank you. Thank you so much to you all.”_

Everyone started talking at once, and Clint closed his eyes for a second, letting their voices wash over him.

 

Alive.

 

He stared at the night out the windshield for a while; then he glanced to the right. Strapped down, Bruce had slumped in his seat, looking all but crushed with relief. He was still half-naked, and still horribly skinny, and still looking like he could use a few nights of sleep, and a few hot meals.

And a lifetime of peace.

 _“Alright,”_ Natasha said in his ear. _“We’re putting out the fire. Should take a few minutes—just fly in circles for now.”_

Clint said nothing.

_“Clint?”_

Bruce glanced at him.

Clint stared straight ahead, and he thought he could feel the Bus flying through the night, the darkness and silver light gliding on the smooth metal like water off a dolphin’s back.

_“Clint, acknowledge.”_

Clint didn’t answer.

_“Clint, acknowledge.”_

“Clint?” Bruce asked.

Clint raised his hand and cut off his mike. After a beat, he just took off the headset altogether, then put on the automatic pilot and turned to him.

Bruce stared back, looking confused.

“Clint,” he said, then stopped. He waited for a second, seeking his words. He seemed so tired. “What are you doing?”

“We don’t have to go back,” Clint said quietly. “They won’t realize—not until it’s too late.”

It was true. The Avengers were scattered, wounded, stranded. They had no way to track them down. They might gather themselves up in a couple of days, but all they’d find in the end would be an empty plane.

Bruce stared at him, a bit wide-eyed.

“You…”

But he couldn’t go on.

Clint smiled at him. “It’s about time you got to choose.”

He exhaled deeply again, then stared into the night. “So what do you say?”

Even without looking at him, he could tell Bruce had this owlish, stunned look he always had when people were being so much as remotely nice to him. Clint knew that if Bruce asked him to go off-grid, Clint would; the Avengers might forgive Banner over this, but not him. Still, he felt serene. Bad decisions and right choices had always been one in his book, after all.

Bruce silently unbuckled himself, then leaned forward in his seat, inching closer to Clint. He reached out and took Clint’s hand. He kneaded his knuckles silently for a minute, then laced their fingers together, and squeezed. He opened his mouth long before he did speak.

“Thank you,” he murmured at last.

Clint looked down. Bruce squeezed his hand again, and said, “Let’s go back.”

Clint felt bad for being so relieved. He looked up at Bruce. “You’re sure?” he said. “Because if you’re just saying this to—”

“I’m sure,” Bruce cut off softly.

Clint stared at him. He wished there was a way to thank Bruce for what he was doing—because he was doing it for Clint. He was too generous to let people sacrifice themselves for him, too selfless, and Clint could not force him to stand for himself; he could not bring him to believe that he could act for himself, at least _once,_ without being selfish.

He took a deep breath, then let go of his hand, switched off the autopilot and put the headset back on.

_“Hawkeye, acknowledge!”_

“Sorry, Widow,” he said. “Lost contact for a second there.”

_“For Christ’s sake, Clint—”_

“I know, I know,” he said. “Sorry.”

He exhaled deeply.

“Alright,” he said. “Hope that fire’s taken care of. We’re coming back.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading. :)


	16. Do I Wanna Know

 

 

 

 

 

 

The fire was out, the landing was done, and Clint hit another few buttons and flicked a few switches before he unbuckled himself.

“Okay,” he told Bruce. “Let’s go find you some clothes.”

Bruce smiled a bit wanly, and once again, Clint was painfully struck by the damage Ross had done, by how skinny, how worn, how tired Bruce looked.

“I don’t think anyone’s my size on this plane,” Bruce mumbled, but he got up to follow anyway.

They went to Clint’s cabin, and Clint pulled out his other pair of jeans, along with a belt, a t-shirt, and his favorite hoodie.

“Sorry,” he said, “button-downs aren’t really my style.”

Bruce smiled a little as he took the clothes. Clint had seen him naked a dozen times on the field; he had slept next to him, and mapped with his hands his chest and back in the dark; he had made him come, once, on the floor of Tyler’s apartment, and Bruce had shaken against him, and pushed his face into his shoulder as he cried out.

And yet, Clint stepped out of the cabin and waited in the hallway for him to get changed.

After a few minutes, he realized he hadn’t given him any underwear, and he was pondering which would be the least embarrassing course of action when Bruce slid the door open and got out. Of course, the pants were a little big for him, but only as though they’d been baggy jeans; and at the very least, he looked comfortable enough in the big, purple hoodie.

“Thanks,” he said softly.

Clint opened his mouth to answer, then spun round when he heard the belly of the plane opening. They were coming in. He turned back to Bruce.

“It’s okay—I’ll deal with them,” he said. “You can go check on Betty.”

Bruce hadn’t even _seen_ her yet. Not since Clint had shot her right in front of him. Bruce stared at him, then nodded a bit jerkily; he turned away to go to the infirmary, and Clint hurried the other way to go take the spiraling stairs down to the cargo area.

He ruffled his own hair as he went, wincing a little. He wasn’t paranoid to the point of thinking that Bruce had lied when he’d said he’d missed him. But he wasn’t stupid, either. And for his own sake, Clint must remember that he’d only known Bruce— _really_ known him—for less than a year. And he _wasn’t_ going to turn this into some kind of lame love triangle. He was _not._ Bruce was here, and he was safe, and Clint breathed this thought like air and really, nothing else mattered.

 

*

 

“And here he is,” Natasha said when he came down the stairs. “The hero of the day.”

She sounded dry and sarcastic, but she still pulled him into a tight hug when he came within reach, which surprised him more than anything she’d ever done.

“You never pull something like this ever again,” she muttered.

“Which part?” Clint said, and she laughed.

The rest of them gathered around him, bloodied, dusty and smiling. None of them looked gravely injured, which was a huge relief. Logan was wrinkling his nose at him.

“So am I part of the weirdoes’ club after all?” Clint smiled.

Logan snorted. “Jury’s still out, bub.”

But he was smiling, too, a shimmering smile ghosting over his lips that anyone else might have missed. A very scorched and exhausted Steve came by to clasp Clint’s shoulder, and Jessica smiled at him, but of course it was Tony who yelled, “But how did you _do_ it?”

“Do what?” Clint asked innocently.

“You were leaking radiation from every pore, Barton,” Logan said. “I was there.”

Clint shrugged. “Told you Banner could help.”

“So what, it’s gone?” Natasha said.

“It’s completely gone,” Clint grinned.

He hoped he hadn’t just lied.

Thankfully, they were all too tired to press the issue at the moment.

 “Where’s Banner now?” Jessica asked.

“With Betty. And—Kurt,” Clint said.

Hank McCoy whispered something to Tony and Pepper Potts, and the three of them headed towards the stairs to reach the infirmary. Clint watched them go. Potts looked like she was… _glowing._ A nice shade of orange.

“We should get this plane moving,” Steve said. “I’m not sure what kind of fallout we’ll have to deal with, but I’d rather not stay here.”

“Lots of people saw that you were alive, Cap,” Tony said from half-way up the stairs. “And lots of people thought that AIM was a respectable organization with no superhuman connections, before they literally tried to set fire to the President. I’m pretty sure the wind’s blowing in our favor again. Killing terrorists always works for your public image in this country; didn’t you know that?”

“We’ll see,” Steve said soberly. “Clint, can you fly us out of here?”

Clint smiled a little, already turning towards the stairs. “Sure thing.”

 

*

 

It only took him an hour to bring the plane to a safe location—Stark had private airports _everywhere,_ seriously.The plane looked weirdly crowded, now that Tony, Pepper Potts, Hank McCoy, and that Rhodes guy—Iron _Patriot?_ Seriously?—had joined them. They were all in various degrees of pain and exhaustion, and Pepper Potts apparently had a medical condition that dwarfed even Clint’s radioactive episode in comparison; so it was decided that they would all just sleep in the plane for tonight, before arrangements were made in the morning.

Tony had requested Bruce’s help with Pepper, and as Clint passed the infirmary on his way to the cargo area, he saw her lying down on the cot next to Kurt’s, curled up on her side, and breathing evenly in her sleep; Tony and Bruce were sitting side by side next to her bed, and the billionaire was apparently very busy telling his life story to Bruce who looked like he was bravely trying not to fall asleep.

Clint wondered whether he should go in.

 “Hey—Mr. Barton,” someone whispered behind him.

He froze. Nobody called him that. Except people he didn’t know—people who didn’t know him.

He slowly turned round. The door of Jessica’s cabin was open. She had bunk beds, and Betty Ross was curled up in the bottom one.

Right—only two beds in the infirmary, and Pepper Potts was in one of them. Clint should have done the math earlier.

Betty was peering at him expectantly; there was a thick, white bandage wrapped around her neck, and the medical eye-patch was all too visible over her left eye.

Clint swallowed, then grabbed the door and slid it open a few more inches.

“Ma’am,” he said awkwardly. “Um. Nice to… properly meet you at last, I guess.”

She smiled a little, and he marveled at this, her ability to smile after everything that had happened—just like Bruce. Those people weren’t trained like Clint and Natasha were; they weren’t soldiers, they weren’t mutants, and yet they were maybe the toughest ones there were out there.

Betty sat up, and patted the mattress next to her.

“Um,” Clint repeated. “I. Alright.”

He walked inside and sat next to her. She was fiddling with a cell phone—Jessica’s, Clint realized—but never looked away from him.

“I wanted to thank you,” she said in a hoarse, raspy voice.

Yeah, people with ruptured tracheae usually sounded like this. Clint smiled wanly. “For putting an arrow through your throat?”

“I thought I’d have to die,” she said in that low, raucous breath. “I thought you were going to kill me. I was ready.”

Clint just stared at her.

“You got Bruce out,” she said. “And you managed to get me out, too. I never dreamed it could be an option.”

Clint shook his head a little, but he wasn’t even sure what he meant by that. She kept looking at him; and again, just like in the Swiss base, he felt that she didn’t need to talk for him to understand. It was obvious enough with how closely she was studying him, anyway; she was trying to understand why Clint Barton—why this complete stranger—had gone to such lengths to save them both.

“Hey, I don’t know you,” Clint admitted. “But I know enough to see you’d be worth killing for.”

She smiled, a bit wryly, as though people had been killed for her and she hadn’t enjoyed it at all. Clint still went on—he owed her the truth he’d kept for so long.

“I care,” he began uncomfortably, “about Bruce Banner. I really care… a lot.”

_Not winning any clarity prizes there, Barton._

Betty Ross kept staring at him.

“Because he’s a friend.” Clint hesitated, then took the leap. “Actually—more than a friend. And more than a teammate. To me.”

Betty frowned a little. Clint said nothing, because yeah, he did mean what she thought he meant. He couldn’t get much clearer. He’d never been good at talking.

And then the cell phone rang in her lap. She startled, glanced at Clint again, then picked up.

“Hey,” she said. Then she smiled and sighed with relief, “Glenn. You got my message.”

A man’s voice fizzed in the phone. She nodded, suddenly shaking a little, and she had such a relieved, fond look on her face, such glistening tears in her eye, that Clint wondered whether he shouldn’t leave to give her privacy. But she only said a few words, which ended by, “Soon. Yes. Me too.”

She hung up.

Then she looked up at Clint.

“That was my husband,” she said.

Clint said nothing.

“Bruce and I,” she went on quietly, slowly, like she was talking to a small child, “remind each other of too much. To live with him—knowing that he ruined my life and that I ruined his right back—to spend every day consumed with guilt, trapped in the past, knowing that there can be no future other than the next disaster—” she cut herself off, shook her head. She looked very weary, but decided still. “This isn’t what our lives should be. We both deserve better than constant sorrow.”

“But he loves you,” Clint murmured.

“And I’ll always love him,” she said simply. “We couldn’t have pulled through without each other.”

She looked at Clint, a bit tired, very kind. “But that’s just not enough.”

Clint just looked back at her. Both of them on this little cot—it made him feel like it was a sleepover. A strange, gloomy sleepover.

“If you have it in you to care about him,” she murmured. “Then you don’t need my permission. For anything.”

 

*

 

Clint got out of Betty’s cabin feeling a little dazed. A lot of things were shifting and reorganizing inside him, and he didn’t feel so good—he thought he was maybe running a bit hot—but the endless streak of self-loathing which had flooded his mind during these past months was finally running dry. There was nothing left to fuel his self-hatred. Apart from the usual things—the voices he could never silence completely; but those he’d learned how to ignore. Most of the time. And even they were growing weaker as everyone’s words—Natasha’s, Logan’s, Betty’s—were truly beginning to sink in.

Clint looked up, and Bruce was there, closing the door of the infirmary behind him.

“Hey,” Clint said. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah,” Bruce sighed, before managing a smile. “Tony… uh, Tony was really dead set on telling me the whole story.”

Clint snorted softly.

“Pepper’s stable for now,” Bruce started to explain as he walked to him, stuffing his hands in the pockets of the hoodie. “And I think Kurt Wagner’s doing better—coming back up one layer of coma at a time.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “What time is it?”

“Something like four am.”

“I—I think I should sleep a little. Do you know where I could…”

Clint wrapped him in his arms and hugged him.

Bruce stayed very stiff at first; then he slowly relaxed against him, and let out a shaky sigh, closing his eyes.

“I got you,” Clint murmured. “Come on.”

He took Bruce’s hand and led him to his cabin. They slid the door shut behind them, without turning on the light; it was a bit cramped, but they managed to undress themselves without bumping into each other too much. They were both too tired and dazed to speak. Bruce only took off his hoodie, while Clint stripped down to his underwear, because his clothes stank of blood. God, he’d been _shot_ in those—less than a day ago.

The bunk was a bit larger than Clint’s usual on the Helicarrier, but that still made it very narrow; they had to tangle their legs together and wrap themselves into each other’s arms before they could find a comfortable position. They shuffled and squirmed awkwardly for a bit, then fell quiet.

For all their exhaustion, it took them a long time to let go, but they did eventually—Bruce first, his breath growing deeper and slower as he drifted off, shivering violently from time to time. Clint stayed awake for a while longer, focused on the smell of Bruce’s hair, the soft rise and fall of his chest, and the warmth spreading into his tired muscles as he held him close.

Eventually, as the grey light of dawn seeped in from under the blind, Clint closed his eyes; and finally, finally, he fell asleep.

 

*

 

Early in the morning, he felt that he hadn’t just been _running a little hot_ earlier. He hurriedly wriggled out of Bruce’s arms, waking him up.

“Sorry—” he managed, “sorry—” barely out of bed yet, he slid the bathroom door open and fell to his knees to empty himself in the toilet. His stomach was convulsing like something was alive inside, and he’d screwed his eyes shut as he retched and heaved, cold sweat covering his brow and nape; when he opened them, all he saw was red.

He’d thrown up blood.

Dark, almost black blood, stinking, rolling in slow drops down the plastic toilet bowl. He started shivering, swallowing, still heaving a little. Fuck, _no._

Bruce was getting up. Clint didn’t want him to see this, but he hadn’t time to flush it and he couldn’t really see how else to avoid it, how to hide the foul color and the awful stench.

“B—Bruce,” he stammered, still gasping. “Don’t—it’s not your fault. Alright? It’s—it’s—it’s _not.”_

Without a word, Bruce crouched and put his thumb on Clint’s cheekbone, pulling at the skin to check the white of his eye; then he sat down with a sigh, and said nothing for a long time.

“How are you feeling now?” he asked eventually.

“I—” Clint almost retched again, but he didn’t feel like his stomach was trying to crawl up his throat anymore. “A bit—a bit… better? I think?”

“You were shot,” Bruce said quietly. “Blood-filled stomachs tend to empty themselves after a few hours.”

Clint blinked the sweat out of his eyes; it took him a minute to understand. He turned to Bruce, still shivering a little. “So—this is _not_ about the Hulk?”

He instantly wished he hadn’t said this out loud.

“I don’t know,” Bruce answered dejectedly, and he looked so tired, so terribly tired.

He waited for a second. Clint’s nausea was calming down. He did feel a tiny bit better.

“I don’t think so,” Bruce said eventually. “Not this time. But maybe some other day. Probably some other day.”

“Maybe never,” Clint countered.

“I don’t _know,”_ Bruce repeated.

There was a silence. Clint’s mouth tasted like old bile and rotten blood.

“Can I—” he croaked. “Would you… give me a glass of water?”

“Of course,” Bruce murmured, standing up and bending awkwardly over Clint to reach the tiny sink. He filled up the plastic glass with warm water and sat back, handing it to Clint who drank slowly, gratefully.

It was so unfair, he raged inside, that their reunion should be marred by this green horizon, as they sat side by side in the small bathroom stinking of sweat and disease. They had been granted a short respite, but the future looked darker and grimmer than ever—Clint remembered what Betty Ross had told him a bit earlier. _Knowing that there can be no future other than the next disaster; this isn’t what our lives should be._

No, this wasn’t fair; this wasn’t how it was supposed to be.

And yet, Clint couldn’t find it in him to be depressed. Not anymore. He’d lost his despondency and hopelessness along the way. Maybe he’d have to fight, but he’d fought his whole life; and even the sick warmth of his fever could not beat the soft warmth of Bruce’s presence by his side.

“Well, you life ruiner,” Clint mumbled, setting the glass on the floor. “I think we’re going to be alright.”

Bruce shook his head, and huffed a bitter laugh. Clint knew that laugh, and he didn’t like it.

“Hey, I do,” he said. “If I spike up again, I’ll just go give the Hulk another hug, and done.”

“That’ll just cure the symptoms. That won’t settle the problem.”

“The symptoms _are_ the problem,” Clint pointed out. “Of course, that means we’re going to have to stay together, like, all the time. You know. Tough, but I’ll manage.”

Bruce looked up at him, very blandly.

After a long time, he said, “I, uh—I’d kiss you, you know, but you sort of stink.”

Clint blinked, then barked a laugh.

“Yeah, talk about a romantic reunion, uh?” he sighed, leaning against the wall. “Manhattan’s sewers all over again.”

“Could have been worse,” Bruce said with a small smile.

He grabbed Clint’s hand and laced their fingers together. Clint wormed his free arm behind Bruce’s back and pulled him close.

“I’m sorry,” Bruce sighed, closing his eyes and pushing his face into his shoulder. “I’m sorry you had to go through all this.”

“And I’m sorry,” Clint said. “Sorry it took me so long to find you.”

Bruce squeezed his hand tighter, then twisted a little in the cramped space and tilted his head to press his lips against Clint’s, for a few seconds.

“How did that taste?” Clint murmured when they parted, and Bruce huffed another laugh. “Really awful,” he said, and then he couldn’t stop his hushed laughter, to the point that Clint laughed too, and they hugged and laughed until they were both out of breath, which didn’t take long; because they were drained out, drained and worn—and together and so surprised to be, away from the entire damn world in that cramped little bathroom.

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading and commenting. ^^


	17. Back up

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Hey, man,” Clint said, closing the door of the infirmary behind him. “It’s me.”

Kurt didn’t answer, lost in a sea of tubes and drips. His breath was as regular as the steady beating of his heart.

Next to him, the other bed was empty; Pepper Potts had cautiously been allowed to leave medical, although she wasn’t even remotely fixed yet. Clint wasn’t really worried; if someone could cure Potts from the unstable effects of Extremis, it was Bruce Banner.

He was kind of magical with this type of thing.

Clint sat by Kurt’s bedside. “So,” he said. “The news. We’re moving to Stark Tower in a few hours to study our options there. Steve wants to disband the Secret Avengers and turn them into the Avengers again. Says we have to make a stand—I think without his fake death the Secret Avengers wouldn’t even have existed. Or maybe he just hated the name. Gotta admit we could’ve done better.”

He paused for a second, then said, “Seems like Coulson will be getting his plane back very soon.”

He sighed. “It just seems weird, you know? How much things depend on what we say they are. Only a few months ago, I’d never believed anything could ever go back to normal, and now it’s happening almost on its own.”

Kurt was breathing slowly, evenly, looking like he was having pleasant dreams.

“I guess normal just has this way of creeping back in,” Clint murmured. “Even though I’m not sure it’ll be that easy.”

He leaned back and kicked Kurt’s bed a little. “Hey, we didn’t talk much, but you seem like a cool kid. Saving my life and Banner an’ all. So we should hang out sometimes—I mean after you wake up. Grab a pizza or stuff. Okay?”

Kurt didn’t move.

“Okay then,” Clint said.

 

*

 

“Clint? What are you doing?”

Clint turned to Natasha, and raised his spatula. “Pancakes.”

She stared at him. “Why are you making pancakes?”

“Why not?” Clint said, flipping the latest one to add it to the pile. “Pancakes on a plane.”

When he turned to her again, she was still staring, frowning a little.

“What,” he said. “Need me to shoot something?”

“…No,” she answered, frowning even more.

“Then I might as well be making pancakes. Found everything I needed; I guess Coulson’s team liked that. I figured I’d just ransack them before we go.” He emptied almost an entire bottle of syrup on the dangerously leaning pile.

Only when Natasha looked around in confusion did she spot Bruce sitting at the table; she frowned a little.

“Don’t look at me,” Bruce mumbled.

“No, you _can_ look at him, ‘cause it’s all for him,” Clint declared. “He’s underfed. You wouldn’t like him when he’s hungry.”

He put the plate in front of Bruce and sat nonchalantly next to him. Although he was looking at Natasha, Clint kept him in the corner of his eye, and his heart clenched a little at the way Bruce, for all his usual self-restraint, couldn’t resist falling on the warm pancakes with obvious relief. He hadn’t resisted at all when Clint had dragged him inside the kitchen.

“I’m great at pancakes,” Clint innocently told Natasha. And since she was just standing there, he added, “Want one?”

Natasha did want one. So did Hank McCoy, James Rhodes, Tony and Jessica. Clint felt a bit surprised to see them all here—but they were all so obviously in need of a break that he shouldn’t have been; and as the conversation rolled on, he began to feel more and more at ease. He’d forgotten that moments like these—like they’d had at the Mansion, before everything—could still happen. Jessica even regretted out loud the absence of a deck of cards. Tony promised he had plenty at the Tower. Bruce kept eating in silence, and if he’d been a little wary at first, it was slowly getting out of him as his stomach filled up and no one gave him blatant nasty looks. Clint wanted to tangle their ankles together, like they used to in Brooklyn, but he didn’t want to make him nervous with all these people around. He was content just watching him eat for now. Bruce was so damn _skinny._

Clint guessed Logan knew about the pancake party, what with his keen sense of smell, but either he didn’t like pancakes, or he wasn’t interested; so Clint was rather surprised to see him show up at last.

“Wouldn’t wanna disturb your breakfast,” he said, leaning against the door, “but Stark’s airport security caught a guy screaming to be let in. A Glenn Talbot.”

Bruce went very pale and swallowed thickly his last piece of pancake. Clint frowned and said in a low voice, “You know him?”

“Yeah, that’s, um,” Bruce coughed a little. “Betty’s husband.”

Clint blinked. Logan snorted, then raised a hand to his earpiece. “It’s okay, guys, let him in. You,” he said, talking to Bruce, “better go tell her.”

Bruce got up, but he looked so nervous that Clint instinctively started getting up too—and then he remembered that this was none of his business, really. He was about to sit back down when Bruce caught his arm in a painful, lightning-quick grip—then let go instantly as if he’d burned himself.

Clint blinked at him again, then looked around before coming back to Bruce. Obviously—oddly—he wanted Clint to come with him. So they both walked out of the room.

Clint wanted to ask Bruce if he was alright once they were in the hallway, but he was so clearly _not_ that it felt sort of useless. They reached Jessica’s cabin in a few minutes, but as they stopped in front of the door, Bruce didn’t move. He stared at the door, wringing his hands, in an awkward in between. Clint looked at him, waited for a second, then reached for the door—slowly, so Bruce could stop him and do it instead—but Bruce didn’t. So Clint slid it open himself.

“Betty?” he called.

A hoarse, sleepy voice answered him. “Who is it?”

“It’s Clint,” he said. “Um—your… your husband is here.”

He heard sheets being tossed away and a few seconds later, Betty was at the door, cheeks flushed red. When she saw Bruce behind Clint, though, she stopped abruptly and became almost as pale as him.

“Just wanted to say bye,” Bruce said in a very small voice. “And… take care. Okay?”

“Yes,” she said in a breath. She managed a nervous, forced smile. “Yes—you too.”

Considering their history, Clint had expected a bit of awkwardness, but not on this level. Betty nodded a bit brusquely, then almost shouldered past Clint who had to step back to let her through, and she all but ran away.

He turned to Bruce, puzzled. Was this about Betty’s husband—about her technically cheating on him with Bruce? Or was this—a chill ran up his spine—was this about Clint himself?But then why would have Bruce asked him to come along?

“Hey—what’s the deal?” Clint asked, a bit awkwardly. “Bruce—if this is because of me, there’s no problem. I know you got together again for a while.”

He sounded patronizing and hated himself for it, but then Bruce just looked at him with wide eyes.

“What?” he said.

“What?” Clint repeated, feeling like he was missing a very important piece of the puzzle here.

Bruce just looked even more confused than him, so Clint tried to explain, “I mean—on that footage from the Swiss bank we used to find you—” he felt a little pang thinking about it, but pushed it away. “We all saw you kissing and stuff. But really—it’s no big deal. I’m not going to… to freak out if you need some time alone with her. I get it.”

Now Bruce was so dumbstruck it was starting to be slightly scary.

“Oookay—so, obviously, I’m _not_ getting it,” Clint said. “But could you start speaking now? I’m getting a little freaked out here.”

Bruce let out a sound as though he’d held his breath for a long time.

“You thought—me and Betty—” he rubbed his eyes in a rough, jerky gesture. “So that’s why… Oh. Jesus. Clint, she can barely stand to be near me.”

“What? No,” Clint protested. “She told me how you supported each other all that time.”

“Of course we did,” Bruce said, with some kind of desperate laugh. “There was no one else, was there?”

Clint just blinked.

“Just think about it,” Bruce went on wearily. “Her own father turned against her because of me. No—I know what you’re going to say,” he said as Clint opened his mouth. “I _know_ I’m not at fault. But still—everything that ever went wrong in her life is related to _me._ I hadn’t heard of her in years before we met again in Siberia. She thought she’d gotten away, she’d thought her life had gone back on track; and there she was, plunged right back into the nightmare, all because she’d committed the crime of caring about me _once.”_

He let out a pressured breath. “And then it was just us trying to survive without any hopes. Yes, she did everything she could to help me—she thought she couldn’t possibly survive this, so she tried to get me out, at the very least. Because she’s a _good_ person. But—that wasn’t exactly the ideal situation for renewing our wedding vows.”

He had this quivering laugh again.

“Didn’t you notice? She stayed locked inside her cabin ever since she got out of medical. Because she doesn’t want to _see_ me. She used to care a lot about me—and she’s doing her best to remember that—she’s trying as hard as she can not to _hate_ me, but that’s much easier when I’m not around.”

Clint stared at him.

He slowly came to realize, then, that Betty had _told_ him all these things, just the day before; except his biased mind had heard them in all the wrong ways.

“But the kiss,” he objected, and instantly felt abysmally lame.

Bruce scoffed bitterly. “That was just how we talked.”

Clint must have looked really dumb then, because Bruce elaborated tiredly, “We were wired at all times. When we whispered, Ross couldn’t hear us, but we couldn’t get close or talk into the other’s ear without him noticing it through her cam. Except when we pretended to kiss.”

He looked away and closed his eyes, rubbing his temples. Clint could just stare.

None of them said anything for a long time.

“I—” Bruce stammered. “I’m a coward. That’s why I wanted you to come with me just now. I can see it in her eyes every time she looks at me.”

He let out a breath that almost sounded like a sob, but it was obviously something which had escaped his otherwise implacable control, because he wasn’t crying. “I shouldn’t be feeling this. But it’s such a—such a—” He raked his hands through his air, breathing hard and deep, eyes too wide. “Such a _relief_ to see her go.” He almost gasped for air for a second, strung-up and raw, and screwed his eyes shut. “God, I’m awful,” he mumbled. “I’m awful.”

He just stood there for a while.

“Well, I’m a grown-up man who can't see two people kissing without thinking they’re in love with each other,” Clint said quietly. “And who’ll pine over it for days on end. That’s probably worse.”

Bruce looked at him. Clint gave him a little scowl as if to say, _what can you do._

Bruce didn’t smile.

“You’ll end up like her one day,” he said in a dead voice.

He looked so forlorn and weary at this moment. “With that same look in your eyes. Trying your best not to hate me. Everyone does, eventually.”

Clint raised an eyebrow. “Have you _met_ me?”

This time, Bruce’s mouth quivered into a wan smile. Clint wrapped a hand behind his head and pulled him in to kiss him, hard.

The whole word vanished into that kiss—into Bruce’s loud breath, and the soft wet feeling of his lips, and his hands turning into fists into Clint’s shirt as he pushed back against him, deepening the kiss, slowly, almost implacably so, _desperately_ so. Clint felt very dizzy when they parted. He leaned against him, reeling a little.

He really wanted to put his hands under Bruce’s shirt right about _now_ —but then he heard something which made them jerk away from each other. Not ten seconds later, Jessica walked in, frowning at them.

“Everything alright?”

“Yeah,” Clint said. “Peachy.”

She was in full gear and carrying her backpack, which meant they were leaving the plane. Clint glanced at Bruce, then at her.

“I’m gonna grab my bow,” he muttered, and hurried away to his room.

 

*

 

Natasha was leaning against the handrail above the cargo area with her arms crossed when he got back.

“Hey,” Clint told her. “Ready to go?”

“Yes,” she said, but didn’t move.

Clint raised an eyebrow at her. “What is it?”

She just looked at him.

“I’m fine now, Nat. Wanna check my eyes? Shit, that and Manhattan, it’s gonna become a—”

“Are you involved with Banner?” she asked.

Clint gaped at her.

“I—” he stammered. “I—um—what do you—involved how?”

“Oh, cut the crap,” she said tiredly. “I saw you in the kitchen. You don’t even realize how different you are, do you? Before Switzerland, you were nearly—” she cut herself off and made a helpless, irritated gesture.

Clint said nothing.

She took a deep breath. “So that’s why you left. That’s why—oh, my _God,_ that’s why you changed your mind in Moscow, isn’t it? Because I told you we were going after him.”

“…Yeah,” he winced.

He could feel her anger like heat waves between them. “Why didn’t you _say_ anything?”

“Guess I didn’t want you finding out how selfish I was,” he said sheepishly.

She squinted at him. “Selfish?”

“Look, I’m the one who caused the civil war, okay?” he said hurriedly. “And I should’ve been hell-bent on fixing it, on being part of the team, but all I could do was worry about him.”

“Well I do hope so,” she said, “since the team was looking for him.”

Clint blinked at her.

“You’re an idiot,” she went on. Then she rubbed her nose. “But I should have known that. I know you care about your friends. I let myself overlook that. And I’m—sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Clint began.

“Shut up.” She exhaled, deeply. “Clint, next time you’ll ask for help. I don’t care whose help—you _will.”_

“Nat, you don’t have to—”

“Let me reformulate,” she said sharply. “Next time, you’ll shove your doubts up your ass and you’ll fucking speak up or I swear I’ll break both your goddamn legs.”

Clint stared at her. Her eyes were dark with fury.

“Are we _clear?”_ she spat.

“Uh,” he said, stunned. “Yeah.”

 _“Good.”_ She whipped round. “Hurry up. We’re making them wait.”

 

*

 

“And here we are,” Tony announced as the Quinjet landed on Stark Tower’s helipad, “the Avengers’ favorite squat. And since Thor’s not here, maybe it’ll take you _two_ entire actual days to ransack the kitchen, instead of one. A man can dream.” His banter was perfectly in tune, but he was holding Pepper’s hand in a tight grip and hadn’t let go during the whole trip; he still didn’t let go as they got up and climbed down the Quinjet.

Everyone got up, and although they’d rested on the plane, they were still weary and battered from various hardships, so they began to scatter without a word.

It wouldn’t be vacation, far from it—they all needed to plan their going public again, to sort out their relationships with SHIELD and the WSC, and to decide what to do in case it didn’t work (which was more than likely); but they’d be able to rest and heal and breathe in a less cramped space before they planned their next move. And that meant a lot already.

“Banner, McCoy, come on,” Tony called above his shoulder. “Science and ladies have this in common that you don’t make them wait.”

Bruce’s gaze flickered at Clint without exactly meeting his eyes; then he slowly got out the Quinjet, exchanging a few words with McCoy as they went. Behind them, Logan and Rhodes were rolling Kurt’s stretcher out of the Quinjet.

Clint wanted to call Bruce back—they still had so many things to discuss, so many things of their own to figure out; and mostly, Bruce needed so badly to _rest_ as well. But Clint knew that Pepper’s situation was a complex emergency, and there was no way Bruce would stay on the sidelines. Besides—other people than Clint had worked to break him out; other people than Clint actually wanted Banner around, wanted him to be there, if only to help.

Clint wasn’t going to throw a spanner in those works. So as much as he hated it, he let him go.

 

*

 

The three resident geniuses gone and locked in the lab, the rest of them were guided by Tony’s crazy English AI into finding vacant rooms to settle in. Clint had been a little wary someone would want to lock him up again in a containment chamber; but his miraculous recovery had convinced them all there were no risks left. Or perhaps they were just too tired to care. He wasn’t going to be the one hinting otherwise, not when he wanted so firmly to believe, himself, that he was alright.

But he _was_ alright. Yeah.

Clint’s feeling of unease grew when he realized, as he got into the elevator, that he didn’t know the place at all. Sure, he’d been in the tower many times before, but only on the designated Avengers’ floor before a mission, for briefings and debriefings. The living floors were entirely new to him; they looked a bit like a five-star hotel, with hushed hallways and soft lighting, and the added bonus of Jarvis—“It’s… Jarvis, right?” _“Yes, Mr. Barton”_ —guiding him to his room.

In front of the door, it looked so fancy he got the stupid urge to knock, but then he remembered no one was in there. He pushed the door, dropped his bow and quiver and bag in the middle of the bed first thing; and then he looked around.

This wasn’t a room—more like a suite; the walls were a soft shade of purple and the carpet a creamy beige; it was huge and crisply clean, and Clint’s things—everything that was him; everything that had kept him alive these past months—looked very tiny and dirty, huddled up in the middle of that immense, cold bed.

Clint opened the mini-bar, closed it, went into the bathroom then out of the bathroom, wandered around for a little bit, looked at the tiny fridge for the best part of five minutes, turned away from it, walked to the door, then back; and he then came back to his original spot—in the middle of the bedroom.

And he just stood there.

He could think of nothing to do. He was tired, but he was too nervous to lie down. New York was both familiar and too distant outside the window, somehow faded, and flat, and unreal, like a canvas of itself.

 

At last, Clint couldn’t help himself anymore and he went into the surreally clean bathroom again, and checked the white of his eyes in the mirror.

The thin veins there were a reassuring pink. His hands trembled a little against his skin, but he chose to ignore it.

He turned away from the mirror and got out out of the suite, closing the door behind him.

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so, so much for reading and commenting! ^^


	18. Everything that kills me

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Here?”

_“Yes, Mr. Barton.”_

Clint pushed the door open and padded softly inside the room. He was very surprised to find Kurt lying in his bed without any machines hooked to his veins and lungs, except for a solitary IV; he looked like he was just sleeping. His pointy tail hung from under the covers, brushing the floor.

Clint stared at him for a little while.

“You’re feeling guilty for nothing,” a gruff voice said. “He made his own call.”

Clint glanced to his right; Logan was sitting with his back against the wall, stripped from his usual leather jacket to reveal a white, dusty tank top.

“What are you doing here?”

“Just checking on the kid,” Logan shrugged. “He’s tough—coming back up real fast.”

Clint nodded absently. Light coma was still coma.

“So you and Banner are that close, uh,” Logan went on.

Clint froze.

Wait. _Wait._ Natasha was one thing, but— _Logan?_

“Arm-to-arm transfusion,” Logan said. “Not what I’d call a common reflex. People don’t do that. People like _us_ do it even less. And Banner?— _never_ would. It’s like he went crazy for a second. Like he forgot the risks—or stopped caring about them.”

Clint said nothing.

And then he changed his mind, and looked right at him. Logan held his gaze, frowning a little.

Clint cleared his throat, then asked, “You ever fell in love with a guy?”

It was really the first true time he’d managed to surprise him—even his resurrection on the plane hadn’t gotten him this wide-eyed look. Logan was quick to recover, though; he snorted a little when he realized Clint was not joking.

“Seriously.” He shook his head. “Jesus Christ, Barton. Of all _people.”_

“Yeah, tell me about it.”

Logan snorted again. “So what—you’re gay now?”

“No,” Clint shrugged. “Don’t need to.”

“Don’t need to,” Logan repeated sarcastically.

“I really don’t. It’s not about the… the, specifics. It’s like when you fall for…a place—a song—a moment. That never happened to you? Everything clicks together and you just _know_ that you’ll never need anything else again, if you can only… if you can only get to keep what you just felt.”

He started blushing as he spoke, and stopped. Alright, so maybe his brain-to-mouth filter wasn’t exactly running at full capacity at the moment. He averted his eyes, looking at Kurt instead, and he wondered whether he wasn’t actually talking to him, telling him how exactly how much he’d saved Clint. He waited for Logan to sneer at him again; but he said nothing.

After a while, Clint looked up at him to check whether he hadn’t fallen asleep or something. Logan was just staring at him, looking, oddly, as though he wanted to say something but couldn’t find the words. Eventually, he appeared to give up and asked instead, almost sullenly, “Why are you telling me this?”

Clint shrugged again. “Because you wanted to know. And I’m tired of hiding stuff. Life’s too short not to go for broke—my life, anyway.”

There was a long silence.

“Want a beer?” Logan asked.

Clint looked up at him, surprised. Logan patted the pack next to him. “Amazing what you can find in those tiny fridges.”

Clint kept staring at him for a second, and then a smile curled up the corner of his mouth.

 

*

 

“What the—why is _everyone_ holed up in here?”

Clint grinned up at James Rhodes frozen on the doorstep. “It just sorta happened,” he said.

“We call it Wagner’s Booze and Coma Club,” Logan added. “Beer?”

It was a pattern with Tony’s friends that they tended to take things in stride. “Hell yeah,” Rhodes said, and slipped inside the room without gaping anymore at the impromptu superhero meeting slash beer pong party happening at the foot of Kurt’s bed.

Steve had been the first to show up, with a look of worry which had turned to mild surprise at finding Clint and Logan already there; Natasha had appeared shortly after, and just let herself fall next to Clint to snatch the beer he’d just opened. The four of them had begun to discuss AIM, but the discussion had degenerated pretty quickly into whether or not Pepper Potts should be admitted into the Avengers as the new Iron Man. Jessica had showed up next; Clint had a vague suspicion she’d wanted to talk to him, but obviously, she hadn’t expected him to be in company, and hadn’t dared to back off. She’d just sat on the ground with them and declared herself on Potts’ side in the ongoing debate—which wasn’t a debate since they all shared the same opinion, really. Tony had shown up next, obviously kicked out of the lab by Pepper herself and wondering where they all were; when he’d discovered they were all planning to replace him with his girlfriend, he started screaming outrage, paused to order eight pizzas, then gave Steve a dramatic look of betrayal and declared he’d win back his membership with poker, although nobody had any cards. The room had gotten much louder in a very short time, but there was no doctor around to protest that Kurt needed to rest. Clint liked it better that way, and he was sure Kurt did, too. The blue lips looked like they were smiling.

It was funny, he thought, that after the cramped plane, they still ended up together again in a small room instead of taking their space. Just like when he’d made pancakes in the morning; they were drawn together somehow. Clint remembered the feeling of horrible loneliness which had suffocated him in his own room a few hours ago. Maybe they all felt the same.

Maybe they’d turned into a team again, along the way.

Only half an hour after Rhodes had showed up, Hank McCoy knocked on the door and came in carrying eight pizzas to announce that Pepper was, if not healed yet, pretty much stabilized, and that Jarvis had told him they were all here, and he’d found those pizzas in the elevator, and he supposed they were for them?

Clint expected him to be pissed off about the mess they’d made in a patient’s bedroom, but McCoy just exchanged a significant glance with Logan, smiled, and sat down with them.

Only then did it occur to Clint that Charles Xavier might very well have been playing a game of his own from the beginning—using Logan and McCoy to test the reliability of the Secret Avengers. That would explain Kurt’s presence—a young, inexperienced newcomer, but with oh-so-helpful teleportation powers that would allow them to fuck off if things went south. Maybe this was why Logan had been keeping watch for Wagner in the first place. Maybe he felt guilty for bringing an unprepared, reckless kid into the field because of the greater good.

Clint couldn’t be sure, but then again, he’d spent the last few months locked in the wings, blind and deaf to what was happening on stage; so maybe Xavier had had a secret agenda, and maybe not; and maybe Clint had missed a number of other things at play; he didn’t care. He’d gotten there, in the end.

As McCoy sat down and Tony produced a deck of cards at long last, Clint set his beer on the floor and got up.

“You’re not playing?” Natasha asked.

“In a minute,” Clint said. “Play a few rounds without me.”

He didn’t look at Jessica, and she didn’t try to get his attention. Maybe they’d never really talk about it after all. Either way was fine by him. Right now, the only thing he knew was that Pepper Potts was okay, which meant Bruce wasn’t bound by duty anymore.

And yet he was the only one missing.

Clint was prepared to ask for Jarvis’s help to look for Bruce—trying to push away his vague anxiety, his creeping premonitions—but he didn’t have to look very far. When he closed the door behind him, he turned to the elevator and Bruce was there, wringing his hands in the hushed corridor; he’d probably come here with McCoy but stayed behind at the last minute.

He looked tremendously relieved to see Clint, maybe even more than Clint was to see him.

“Hey,” Clint smiled. “I was gonna go look for you. Out of the lab at last?”

“—Yeah,” Bruce said, sounding as though he’d held his breath.

There was a slightly awkward silence.

“It’s turned into some kind of party in there,” Clint said, jabbing his thumb at the door. “Going to wake up Wagner at this rate.” He let his hand fall back down. “You wanna go in?”

Bruce smiled the wry smile Clint remembered from a year ago. “I wouldn’t want to kill the mood.”

“You’re selling yourself too short, Banner,” Clint said lightly. “Tony could use some support. They want to fire him and replace him with Pepper.”

“Oh, he must be devastated.”

“They’ve started playing cards, too, and I’ve got a feeling your poker face’s pretty great.”

“Not really,” Bruce murmured.

Clint walked to him and stopped right in front of him. He realized his heart was pounding in his ears, so loud Bruce must be hearing it.

“Mine’s awesome,” Clint told him. “Like, for example, I bet you think I’m really calm right now.”

“You look calm,” Bruce admitted.

“I’m not,” Clint murmured.

They said nothing for a second, just looking at each other.

Then they leaned forward and kissed suddenly—fell into a tight embrace and kissed so deeply, so completely, that it felt like drowning for a split second; Clint caught his breath in a gasp, then backed Bruce against the wall and kissed him again, even deeper, wanting him more than he’d ever wanted anyone. And yet he felt no arousal whatsoever; just like the rest of his feelings for Bruce, that part hadn’t budged since last year, and Clint wondered at how strange it was, that he’d fallen so desperately in love with someone he couldn’t make love to. He wanted him—wanted him physically, wanted to feel him under his fingers and hands and lips, but this almost painful desire had nothing _sexual_ about it. This was a real problem—because Clint felt only physical exhaustion could bring him to let go of Bruce right now, and if he wasn’t going to find it in sex, then that meant they’d just stay here forever until one of them starved to death.

“—Missed you,” he gasped, breaking the kiss. “I missed you. I’m sorry—” he tried to catch his uneven breath. “I’m freaking myself out,” he mumbled. “Am I freaking you out? If you—”

Bruce kissed him again, shutting him up, and Clint nearly melted into the softness, the wetness, the _warmth_ of it. He crushed Bruce against him and found him thin, found him cold, his body worn down after so many months on the run.

“You’re shaking, man,” he mumbled, wrapping him tighter in his arms. “You should take a hot shower or something.”

Bruce huffed a laugh against him. “I guess I could use one,” he murmured.

As he said this, his hand found Clint’s and he laced their fingers together, and Clint felt suddenly light-headed.

 

*

 

They made out like teenagers in the elevator and stumbled out of it and into Clint’s room, which didn’t feel nearly as cold and empty as before, if a lot darker now that the sun had set outside. They sent a lamp crashing onto the floor and huffed a laugh together as they undressed themselves and each other.

“Remember your archery tryout?” Clint said as he shucked Bruce’s shirt above his head. “You broke a lamp that time, too.”

“God, yeah,” Bruce said in a tone which sounded like he was surprised it had happened in real life, surprised he hadn’t imagined it, “—what a disaster that was—” Clint unashamedly ran his hands down his back to grope his ass, making him squeak, then chuckle. Bruce’s hands hovered over the button of Clint’s jeans for a second; but when Clint kissed him again, Bruce decidedly unbuttoned him and pulled down his zipper. Clint did the same to him and only remembered Bruce wasn’t wearing any underwear when he pulled down his pants; he got rid of his own boxers at once to set things straight, then grabbed Bruce’s neck and pulled him close to kiss him yet again. Bruce smiled against his lips, and then they broke the kiss to just hug tight, so tight they cut each other’s breath.

They stayed close for a long while, skin to skin, until Bruce started shivering again and Clint reluctantly peeled his arms off him. “Alright, shower,” he said. “C’mon.”

A soft light arose in the bathroom as they walked into the huge shower and shut the glass door behind them. “Fuck, I can never get the hang of other people’s showers,” Clint said, squinting at the tile wall. “What do I do?”

“I think you’re supposed to ask Jarvis,” Bruce smiled.

“Seriously?”

The water turned on in answer, like a soft warm rain which trickled down Clint’s neck and back.

“Unbelievable,” he said, and then he pulled Bruce close again for a cheerful, delighted kiss. Water slowly soaked their hair and rolled in drops down their noses and between their lips; Clint licked it off Bruce’s mouth, felt him smile under his tongue, and kissed him yet again. The water pooled in the hollows of his collarbones, and he drank it there, tasting his skin. There was a bunch of bottles of shampoo and body wash in a niche in the wall, and Clint grabbed a few of them—“‘Red Velvet Cupcake’, Bruce. Sounds good? Or would you prefer ‘Wild Passion Flower’? Or maybe ‘Cinnamon Sugared Doughnut’? Oh wait wait wait, I got it, check out this one, ‘Secret Wonderland— _a blend of luscious strawberry, frosted jasmine petals and white amber, inspired by a world you never dreamed existed.’_ Stop laughing, I swear to God, it’s written right here”—and ended up picking one at random to squeeze out a huge glob in his hand and rub it into Bruce’s hair. He loved the feeling of his curls turning soft again under his fingers—loved the thought of cleaning him, of washing the grime off him as though he could have washed away the exhaustion and sorrow along with it. Bruce washed him too, pretty much at the same time; to feel his hands on him, slick and wet and slippery, to see his naked body, his wet hair, it all filled Clint with a deep, excruciating tenderness, a suffocating joy, quenching his thirst for his touch at long last.

He had trouble believing this was even real. This was too easy. Too domestic. Shower together—he couldn’t remember for the life of him why they hadn’t done this back in Brooklyn.

Then he hugged him again, and remembered why. Bruce was half-hard against his thigh, obviously trying his best to forget it and think pure thoughts.

Clint didn’t know if Bruce was into guys, or if he batted for both teams, or if he simply hadn’t been touched in far too long. He didn’t care either way. He pulled back a little to stare into Bruce’s eyes, water dripping between them. Bruce winced, then hid his face in his hands, slowly rubbing his temples with the tip of his fingers.

“Hey,” Clint told him softly, brushing the wet strands of hair off his forehead. “It’s alright to get excited, man.”

Bruce shook his head. “You’re—um,” he mumbled. "You told me you weren’t… um.”

“Do I look like I mind?” Clint grinned.

Bruce relaxed a little at that. He slowly dropped his hands and looked at Clint. “…No,” he admitted. “But you don’t have to—you don’t have to…”

“I know that,” Clint said.

He slowly brushed his hand up Bruce’s inner thigh, and the muscle quivered violently under his fingers—Bruce clutched at him, and Clint froze.

“I’m—I’m sorry,” Bruce said a little desperately. “It’s just—really, don’t, don’t force yourself. Please.”

“I’m not,” Clint answered honestly.

Bruce persisted in looking miserable, so Clint tried his best to articulate what he felt. “Look, I don’t… yeah, I guess I’m nominally straight—like, if you want to actually fuck, that’s not gonna work out. But all the rest,” he hurried to say as Bruce opened his mouth, “it’s like kissing. Like holding you, or making out like idiots. It’s not a turn-on. Doesn’t mean I don’t love it in all the other ways.”

They looked at each other in the warm whisper of the trickling water.

“Hey, I’m a grown-up,” Clint said. “Well, sort of. Can you trust me on this? To know what’s fine by me?”

Bruce still looked a little unsure, but he nodded, slowly; when Clint’s hand snaked down again, he closed his eyes and softly thumped the back of his head against the wet tile wall. Clint wrapped his fingers around him, slick and easy. Sure, he didn’t feel aroused, but he didn’t feel repelled, either; what made him dizzy was Bruce’s suddenly shaky breath and his fluttering eyelids, and his fingers digging in Clint’s slippery arms.

The first time—the last time—he’d done this, Clint hadn’t really thought about it. He’d just wanted to make Bruce feel good; and the next day, Bruce had left. After that, Clint had tried not to look back at the things that hurt too much. Now that he had Bruce back, warm and solid against him, he could finally stop and breathe and think; and he realized that although he’d expected it to be at least a little awkward, he actually felt a lot more confident than with any of his female partners. First of all, he wasn’t struggling to balance his pleasure and his focus—he was only focus, happy to let Bruce have all the pleasure; and second of all, he _knew_ how to give pleasure to this kind of body, since he had the same. He was surprised at what a relief it was, to find himself in familiar territory.

He wrapped his free hand behind Bruce’s head and kissed him, a gasping, open-mouthed kiss. Bruce was panting when they parted; suddenly, he winced and pushed against Clint’s chest. “…Clint.”

“What’s wrong?” Clint murmured, stepping back a little.

“It’s—it’s not right,” Bruce said, words scrambled and halting. “You shouldn’t be doing this—after what I did to you—you shouldn’t even—”

Clint huffed in irritation and sank to his knees.

Bruce gaped at him. Clint held his gaze, heart pounding. He was himself half-shocked at finding himself down there, but at the same time, he didn’t want to get back up.

For a second, there was only the sound of water around them.

“Bruce, I know guilt,” Clint said quietly, rubbing his thumb over Bruce’s hipbone. “I’m not leaving you down in this pit.”

He grabbed Bruce’s hand and squeezed; his other hand left Bruce’s hip to go wrap around his thigh.

“Okay, so I never did this before, obviously,” he said. “Wish me luck or something.”

Bruce let out a shaky breath, then bit his lip when Clint slowly took him in his mouth.

Okay. _Okay_ —not _at all_ like giving head to a girl. It felt much bigger in Clint’s mouth than it’d felt in his hand, kinda uncomfortable, really; for now, it tasted of nothing save for warm water and body wash. Clint started to suck a little, as you do, and tried to take it a little deeper, but then he felt Bruce jerk and cursed himself—fuck, right, teeth. He’d often hissed at girls to mind that, but he realized now that it wasn’t all that easy.

 _Am I really doing this?_ God, it felt so awkward. If he had any doubts left as to whether he was bisexual or not, they vanished now. He did his best to use his lips, and sucked a bit more earnestly, closing his eyes and frowning a little to focus. If he bobbed his head like that?—yeah. Maybe this hadn’t been such a good idea—but then Bruce moaned, a tiny moan between clenched teeth, and his fingers squeezed Clint’s hand _hard._

Okay—anything that made Bruce moan like that was worth doing, and Clint was willing to practice. Hell, when you thought about it, this wasn’t such a big _deal._ Just kissing him in a different place. Whatever. He went at it again, feeling a bit more assured, and his free hand climbed up Bruce’s thigh to grab his hip again, pull himself closer to take him deeper. It really wasn’t all that easy, but it wasn’t that complicated either, and after a few minutes, Clint could tell from Bruce’s small whimpers that he must have gotten the basic hang of it. Well, it was ridiculous but he couldn’t help feeling a little proud.

And he wanted to make Bruce feel _good,_ he wanted him to let go, to think only about himself for just a single damn minute. Clint’s knees were starting to hurt, but he also started to taste something different than the clean taste of soap and water, so he didn’t relent. He tried to remember all the tricks that he knew worked for him; and although performing them was not really the same as receiving them, he could tell Bruce was close, and he gripped his hip tighter and really let himself go, he could do this, he was okay, he wanted to do this, just a little more, just a little more—and suddenly Bruce squeezed his hand tight and gasped a scrambled warning just before he came.

Clint was sort of taken by surprise; he had intended to spit it out, but the taste really wasn’t so bad and his mouth was filling so what the hell, he might as well swallow. So he did, smiling at Bruce’s shudders, and rubbed circles in his hip; he waited until he was sure it was over, and then it was, and he pulled back with a deep breath, sitting back on his heels.

Bruce slowly let himself slide down on the floor with him. He took a second to catch his own breath, then hugged Clint tight and said nothing for a long minute.

“So,” Clint mumbled. “Out of ten, you’d give me—what, at least an eight?”

Bruce huffed a hoarse laugh, then pulled him even closer and kissed him passionately, which surprised Clint a little, considering—but of course Bruce wouldn’t mind, and the kiss turned into a long, warm embrace.

“Thank you,” Bruce murmured, and maybe the shower wasn’t entirely to blame for the wetness on his cheeks. “Thank you.”

Clint just held him for a while.

He had waited for him, for so long. And this—this was worth each fucking second.

“C’mon,” he said after a while. “I bet Tony has obscenely expensive towels too.”

As it turned out, he did; Bruce looked scrawnier than ever in the huge fluffy folds. Clint felt like wrapping him up in three layers of it and putting him to bed like this. Seriously, Bruce needed to be taken care of so _bad_ it was a wonder that nobody was smothering him in hot cocoa and pats on the back at all times.

“You have the weirdest hair,” Clint told him as he ruffled it with yet another towel. “It’s just all those curls…”

“I still—feel—kinda bad, you know,” Bruce mumbled.

Clint frowned at him. “What?”

“You didn’t have to do that. And it was—” Bruce smiled a little, sheepish and wan. “This was all about me.”

Clint grinned, relieved, and wrapped the towel around Bruce’s shoulders to pull him close.

“Damn right it was.”

 

*

 

Clint’s closet was filled with nondescript clothes, and Logan had been right—his tiny fridge was incredibly well-stocked, with all the things he liked. He silently promised himself to thank Tony later.

Neither of them was really hungry, although they hadn’t eaten since the morning, so they just dressed themselves in soft, loose clothes, then drew the covers over them. Bruce settled into Clint’s arms, and let out a shaky sigh. Clint held onto that sound for a second.

They were too tired to doze off at once, if that made any sense.

“Can we sleep in tomorrow?” Bruce murmured.

 They both huffed a laugh.

“Yeah,” Clint breathed, smiling, “yeah, I think we can take a day off.”

There was a silence.

“It doesn’t feel real,” Bruce added, in an even softer voice. “It’s like another dream.”

Clint knew the feeling, only too well. He squeezed him a little, and didn’t say anything.

He should have.

 

*

 

Clint didn’t want to wake up. It was dark and warm and soft again, and he wanted to stay there this time. He couldn’t wake up again, he didn’t want to—he wanted to take Kurt’s place. Yes. Let Kurt enjoy his young life and his indestructible joy, and let Clint sink into the cotton softness of his delusions instead, the memory of lost things, and the smell of Bruce, smell of tea and dust…

He came to, and moved a little in the bed. He reached out, and found no one there.

Clint sighed, still hazy and half-dreaming. It had felt so real this time. He rolled to the other side and opened his eyes.

And Bruce was there, breathing slowly, curled up under the covers.

Clint was so _happy—_ his heart so _full—_ he couldn’t stand it. He felt a tightness inside his chest which pulled to the point of pain.

_Bruce, Bruce, Bruce. Fuck, I’m so screwed, I love you._

He clumsily got up, very slowly so he wouldn’t wake him up, and wobbled to the bathroom. The tightness in his chest hadn’t relented, and he felt vaguely thirsty, or maybe he wanted to pee. All he knew was that he wanted to go to the bathroom. He was still feeling fuzzy, foggy, although he had no problem seeing where he was going. The room looked gloomy again for some reason, as though plunged in murky waters.

Clint stopped in the doorway of the bathroom, stayed there reeling a little for a while; then he yawned deeply and walked inside, pushing the door shut behind him. Yeah, thirsty, he guessed he was thirsty.

Then he looked up and saw himself in the mirror.

For a second, he was dazzled by the bright green of his own eyes; then the darkness crept back in from the edge of his vision, and there was nothing more.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, Clint.


	19. Makes me feel alive

 

 

 

 

 

Something cold and sticky woke him up.

Clint groaned and rolled on his side, stopping to hiss with pain. His skull was aching and throbbing. He was still in the bathroom—he’d hurt his head falling down, and blood was crusted into his hair above his right ear.

It was so dark in here—still the middle of the night. He knelt up with difficulty, then groped for the toilet paper, soaked it in water in the sink, and scrubbed the bloodstain off the floor, without thinking at all, feeling numb. He tossed it in the trash, then painfully got up—blood rushed to his head and he had to grip the sink to steady himself.

Fucking hell. He took a deep breath, then looked up into the mirror.

His eyes were back to normal.

He washed his hair in the sink and scrubbed hard with a hand towel to get rid of the blood; the bruise was swollen and sensitive under his fingers, but he’d gotten hurt often enough to know it would be of no consequence. He stuffed the towel in the trash, too, then took a deep breath.

Softly padding out of the bathroom, he stopped on the threshold. Bruce was still sleeping, curled up in bed, his deep breath the only sound in the silent bedroom. He still looked worn, too pale with dark rings under his eyes, but he was sleeping soundly, for maybe the first time in months.

And now Clint had to wake him up and tell him that the poison in his blood hadn’t gone away. Tell him maybe Bruce _had_ killed Clint in the end. Tell him that, at any rate, the nightmare wasn’t over.

“No,” Clint hissed under his breath.

He shook his head. “No,” he repeated.

He turned away and hurried out of the room.

 

*

 

As a former SHIELD agent, Clint knew all about the Hulkbuster programs. Stark had helped with that, too, before his Afghan phoenix trip; the gamma dampening arrows Clint had been provided with during the Return of the Ants hadn’t just popped out of nowhere.

Clint might not know his way around the entire tower, but he certainly did know about the armory.

The doors of the elevator opened, and Clint stepped inside the silent, dark room. The place reminded him a little of the Bus’s cell, and of the inside of his own quiver. The system was entirely automatized and rigged for the Avengers’ voice prints.

“Hawkeye requesting access,” Clint mumbled.

_“Granted.”_

The voice wasn’t Jarvis’s; it was Tony’s. He must have thought it was funny back then. Clint was strangely touched to find that his access codes hadn’t been canceled. Or maybe he was just feeling dizzy again.

He was. Fuck, he had to do this quick.

“Any gamma dampeners?” he asked.

The system whirred and clicked just like a giant version of his mechanized quiver indeed, and presented him with the steel and glass case he remembered from the ants battle.

He exhaled a shaky breath, then took the quiver out and slung it on his shoulder. It was heavier than he remembered. Clint went back into the elevator and wobbled so severely he had to lean against the smooth wall as the doors closed behind him. He had to do this now. Do this now, let the dizziness go away, go back to Bruce. Bruce…

He slammed the emergency button of the elevator, effectively stopping it in its tracks, then sat down and twisted the metal quiver open. White smoke blew out of it just like he remembered. He took out an arrowhead filled with a green liquid—was this supposed to be ironic or something?—and flexed his left arm, making the veins stand out and throb. They looked darker than their usual pale blue.

His hand trembled in the air.

Was he really doing this? Hiding away to stick needles in his own arm like a goddamn junkie. What if this stuff made things even worse? He had no idea what he was doing. But he _had_ to try it. He had to do it on his own. There was no other way.

He couldn’t tell Bruce, he fucking _couldn’t._

_When you start caring about people, you push them away. You let them down. That’s your superpower._

He winced.

_Next time, you’ll shove your doubts up your ass and you’ll fucking speak up or I swear I’ll break both your goddamn legs._

He ran a hand over his face, then let the arrowhead fall down on the floor and curled up on himself, for a long time.

“Hey, Jarvis,” he mumbled at last.

_“Agent Barton, sir?”_

“Can you… could you… call someone for me?”

 

*

 

_“Who is this?”_

The voice was sleepy and grumpy and strained with underlying tension. Clint was huddled in the corner of the elevator. He opened his mouth, unable to find something to say.

“—It’s me,” he managed at last.

Fucking brilliant, Barton.

_“Who? Is—”_

She abruptly stopped talking.

_“…Clint?”_

“Yeah,” Clint said. “Look, um, sorry for calling so late…” He licked his lips. “And… sorry I stopped calling.”

Silence.

“Katie? Is everything… are you okay?”

 _“No,”_ she said.

She sounded shaky. Too shaky. _“I’d promised myself I would yell at you, but I’m just so fucking happy, you fucker.”_

She sniffed, once, and then managed to keep her voice steady. _“Clint—I thought you were dead. I was sure you were dead.”_

“I was,” he said. “For a while. But I got better.”

_“You’re coming home, right?”_

She must think he was still in Europe, Clint realized.

He looked at the veins on his arm, now pulsing almost black, then at the arrowhead on the glistening floor.

“Yeah,” he murmured. He ran a hand through his hair, then let it fall down. “Yeah. I’m coming home. I—I promise.”

 

*

 

Clint was growing light-headed again by the time he got to his floor. The steel quiver was cold and heavy on his shoulder. He tried not to think or he’d change his mind again. He was already beginning to change his mind. _He could go home by himself. He just had to do the injection. What was the worst that could happen?_

But when he walked inside his room, he forgot about it all.

Bruce was twisting in the sheets, breath halting and ragged, turning his head from side to side as though he was about to change—but he was still _sleeping._ He let out a raw, distressed noise, then scowled again and turned on the other side, gasping for breath. Clint remembered then—a long time ago—how he’d heard him cry in his sleep, alone, at 5 am in the morning.

He let the quiver fall down with a muffled _thump_ and hurried to the bed. Bruce was clutching at the sheets and panting into the pillow. Clint sat next to him and softly shook him.

“Bruce—Bruce?” he said, throat tight. “Bruce, it’s me.”

Bruce froze; then his eyes snapped open, and he looked even more panicked than before—he didn’t look like he recognized Clint.

“Hey,” Clint repeated, not knowing what to do. “It’s okay. I’m here. Are you—”

“No,” Bruce panted. He brusquely backed away, panting, as though Clint’s hesitant hands on his shoulders had burned him. “Don’t— _touch_ me.”

Clint backed off at once. “I didn’t—” he stammered, “I’m sorry—why—”

 _“Why?”_ Bruce almost yelled, hands curling into fists, “why? You’re asking _why?”_

He took a deep breath and let out a shaky laugh. “Because this isn’t happening! Because things don’t work like that! Because mothers die with their heads cracked open! And fathers rip their daughters’ eyes out! And people die everywhere around you! And you can’t do anything! You’re just sitting there with blood on your hands! And you destroy everything you touch! Everything you love! And you have to keep running and keep moving or it gets worse! It can always get worse!”

He sounded like he could never stop. “And you don’t get to rest! And you don’t get to ask for help! And you try to fight back, you try settling down, you start hoping again, you start thinking that _maybe,_ and then it all falls apart again! And it happens all over again! And people keep dying and suffering and it’s all because of you! And you can’t even die! You have to stay and watch! Watch it all!” He was sobbing now, sobbing without tears, and yelling in gasps— “And I _can’t_ do this all over again! I can’t have you telling me it’s okay! Telling me you recovered and everything will be fine! Because this is too good to be true! This is too perfect! Things never go that well! This is another lie! Another trap! I don’t want to have it all ripped away again, I can’t do this again, God, please, I can’t do this again, I can’t…”

He was curled up on himself, shaking like a leaf, crying miserably and repeating, “I can’t …”

After a long, long time, his desperate sobs relented. He hid his face into his hands and took deep, shaky breaths, for almost five minutes straight.

“I’m sorry,” he moaned after a long while. “God, I’m sorry.”

His voice sounded wet and edgy, as though he was about to burst into tears again. “I’m so sorry. I had a bad dream. I freaked out. I’m sorry.”

“I’m an idiot,” Clint said under his breath.

Bruce blinked up at him with wet eyes. “…What?”

“Give me your hand,” Clint murmured wearily.

Bruce hesitated, then slowly did as he was told. His hand was ice cold and shaking ever so slightly. Clint raised it to the back of his head and let Bruce feel the pulsing bruise behind his ear. He hissed a little when he moved his fingers.

“What,” Bruce repeated softly, puzzled, but at the very least distracted from his panic and his despair. “What happened?”

“I fell down in the bathroom half an hour ago,” Clint said. “Passed out with eyes glowing green.”

Bruce went very white, but Clint’s fingers wrapped tight around his wrist to keep him from pulling away, and he pressed Bruce’s hand against his chest—over his heart, and stared hard at him. “Bruce, I’m _alive,”_ he said. “So no, things aren’t perfect. I was going to hide it from you. I’m sorry.”

He took a deep breath. “Look, there are a lot of things we can try to cure me—and even if it all fails, I’ve _told_ you, I’d much rather live with it than be dead. What you did was the _right_ thing.”

Bruce still looked like death, but his hand didn’t move in Clint’s hold, as though he was hypnotized by the heartbeat under his fingers.

“It’s normal to freak out,” Clint breathed. “It happened to me so many times after a mission. Right now, you just can’t believe things can get any better, because you’ve been through so much for so long. It’s the discrepancy effect. But it _will_ get better.” He pressed Bruce’s hand flat over his heart. “I swear it will. You just need to give it time.”

Bruce’s face just grew even more ashen.

For a second, Clint was confused, but then he caught a glint of green reflecting in Bruce’s eyes and winced. “Seriously, timing.”

His head was starting to spin already. Without letting go of Bruce’s hand, he leaned over the bed and stretched gracelessly to grab the heavy steel quiver, which he heaved up on the bed. “Okay, so help me out here,” he said, opening it with a _pssh_. “Is it safe for me to stick one of these things in my arm?”

“I—” Bruce stammered, looking on the brink of another panic attack. “What is it?”

“Gamma dampeners,” Clint said casually. “Here.”

He gave him an arrowhead and Bruce’s hand squirmed out of his grip to take it and raise it before his eyes. He read the string of numbers and letters printed around the vial, turning it with shaky fingers.

“Okay,” he mumbled, then scooted a bit closer. “Okay. I—think it’s okay.”

He handed the arrowhead back, but Clint didn’t take it and gave Bruce his arm instead.

Bruce hesitated for a second, swallowing thickly. Then he caught Clint’s elbow, fingers shaking; but they were steady when he stuck the needle in the vein with a sharp stab, and let the automatized arrowhead empty its charge by itself into Clint’s blood.

Clint’s eyes fluttered shut, and he took a deep breath.

“Better,” he mumbled.

The dizziness faded away. He opened his eyes. “Still green?” he asked.

Bruce looked unable to speak for a second. Then he breathed, “No.”

Clint grinned at him.

“Well hey, look at that,” he said, patting the quiver. “Looks like we _can_ control it. Isn’t that a good—”

His words stuck themselves in his throat as Bruce threw his arms around him and clung at him for dear life. Clint was startled, but then he hugged back, and found himself swallowing around the tightness of rising tears.

“Hey, Doc,” he said under his breath. “It’s okay. It’s not perfect, but it’s okay.” He rubbed his back. “You can take a break now.”

Bruce shuddered deeply as he breathed out. Clint could feel he wanted to say something, but the words apparently wouldn’t leave his mouth; in the end, he pressed his face into Clint’s chest and only murmured in a weak, somehow terrified voice, “You’re all I have.”

Clint held him tighter. He wanted to tell him how he’d sort of switched off after Bruce was gone—how everything he’d thought he had suddenly didn’t matter anymore. How all he _really_ had was Bruce, too. But it all sounded stupid in his head, so he just held him. This was what they needed in the end—someone to hold onto, in this ever-changing, ever-indifferent world.

And love, Clint thought, pressing his face into Bruce’s hair, love didn’t get any better than that.

 

*

 

Clint wanted to go back to Brooklyn.

He didn’t like the tower. Well, no, he _liked_ it, but—it wasn’t home. And he wanted to take Bruce home. He wasn’t sure how the doctor felt about letting everyone know how close they were, but he knew that the longer they stayed, the more likely the cat was to come out of the bag. Or out of the closet. Whatever.

For now, Bruce and Clint had somehow found themselves sitting at a table with a very sleep-deprived Tony, eating a lunch which he called breakfast while complaining about how Steve had called a press conference also involving Xavier, which was good, and Tony, which was _not_ good, because it wasn’t like he was the _leader_ or anything, for chrissakes. As he rambled, he was writing equations with his finger in a puddle of spilled coffee, which looked far too complex for the state he was in. (“Come on, Banner, what d’you think?” “I think you need to sleep a little, Tony.”)

Clint had spiked up again at dawn. The gamma dampeners had done their job again, but Bruce had started getting very agitated; he wouldn’t wait till daylight to try and analyze Clint’s condition. So Bruce had drawn a small vial of Clint’s blood and gone down to the lab to analyze it in every way known to mankind, and even a few unknown ones.

Clint rather thought that this green disease inside of him was very much like lung fluid; it piled up and up and up, until you tapped into it and sucked out the stuff. That was about all you could do about it, and really, it was just a mild inconvenience. Yeah, on the very first time, the overload had almost killed him, but these minor spikes only caused headaches and nausea, very much like what he’d felt on the second coming of the ants. Then again, he was no rocket scientist, so he might be wrong.

And he knew there were other long-terms risk, because human bodies usually react in a very specific and very poor way to radiation exposure. He tried not to worry about it, because Bruce was already doing that for the both of them.

Clint had been dead set on staying in the lab with him for the whole procedure, making conversation and flicking paper balls at Bruce whenever this hollowed-out look started to creep into his eyes. After the last test was over, Clint had dragged him back into their room to take a shower; it had been short and warm and not even remotely sexual, and Bruce looked a bit calmer afterwards, amenable to go into the kitchen to eat at long last.

“By the way, Banner,” Tony slurred, bringing Clint back to the present.

The billionaire wiped out the coffee equations, then squinted at Bruce. “You know you still got your old room here, right?”

Bruce blinked. “I—yes.”

“But Jarv’ told me you weren’t sleeping in it. Wha’s the deal?”

Bruce and Clint glanced at each other. Clint wasn’t sure what to say, but Jarvis conveniently chimed in.

_“Sir, I am very pleased to announce that Mr. Wagner has woken up.”_

*

 

They let Clint go in first.

The yellow eyes opened very slowly, blinked at the ceiling, glanced left, then right.

When he caught sight of Clint, Kurt smiled, slow and lazy, sharp white teeth glinting against his blue lips.

“Hmm,” he said, closing his eyes again. “I understand nothing. I go down in Russian dam house, with you dying in a puddle of blood. I wake up in five-star hotel with you watching me sleep.”

Clint laughed under his breath. Kurt licked his lips, then closed his eyes, swallowing thickly. “How long—” his voice broke, and he took a minute.

“How long did I sleep?”

Clint grinned. “You’re not beating Captain America’s record anytime soon, man.”

Kurt reopened his eyes and looked at him, warily hopeful.

“You slept for a week.”

Kurt stared at him for a second; then he buried his face in his hands, and exhaled a shaky laugh. _“Gott sei Dank.”_

“No, thank you,” Clint said in a low voice.

Kurt reopened his eyes and looked at him again. He sat up in his bed, very slowly, and when the sheet slid down, Clint could see that the strange patterns he had on his cheeks and forehead spiraled round on his chest as well. Once again, he was struck by the thought that they looked hand-made, and he tried to push it away.

“How did you survive?” Kurt asked in a low voice.

“Bruce Banner,” Clint simply said.

Kurt looked at Clint’s stomach, where the blood had drenched his shirt one week ago.

“He’s the one you were looking for,” he said.

It hadn’t been a question, but Clint still nodded. "He's my," he said, then stopped, looking for the right word. "My _Lebensgefährte."_[  
](http://www.dict.cc/german-english/Lebensgef%C3%A4hrte.html)

"Oh," Kurt said softly.

Clint looked up. Kurt looked a bit stunned, but by no means repelled or disapproving, and Clint felt a wave of fondness for the kid.

“I owe you, Kurt,” he said. “You have no idea how much I fucking _owe_ you.”

 _“Ach was._ You saved my life.”

“I got you out of a barn.”

“I got you out of a dam house,” Kurt shrugged. Then he smiled his sharp smile again.

Clint couldn’t help smiling back, and he shook his head. “Alright, man. Well, least I can do is buy you a beer. Unless you’re too busy being the best X-Man of all times.”

“Including Logan?” Kurt said, eyes crinkling.

Clint snorted. _“Please._ Logan didn’t even make it to the semi-finals.”

Kurt smiled again, but this time, the week of coma showed in the slow stretch of his lips. That, and perhaps a story of his own, that story which had led him into that barn, bound and drugged to be sold away like a piece of meat.

“The X-Men are—” he began.

He paused for a long time. Then he said, speaking slowly with that strong accent of his, “I like it. Living among them. Being a part of it. But to stay between us mutants all the time—I suppose…” He shut up, smiled self-consciously, and licked his lips with that pointy tongue. “I guess I could use a friend.”

Clint blinked. Then he smiled, but before he could say anything, everyone else got tired of waiting behind the door and invaded the room talking all at once. Kurt looked a little gobsmacked to see them all—not just McCoy and Logan, but Steve, and Tony, and Natasha, and even Rhodes—and Clint suddenly felt tremendously glad that Kurt was so _young,_ still in the process of building his foundations, and still able, with the Avengers and Xavier’s support, to build them _right,_ to build them good, and to forget the abuse he’d been put through.

As for Clint, and Bruce, such a thing could have been nice. After all, they were all getting along well, and no one, not even Logan, had made half-veiled allusions to the fact that Banner’s presence wasn’t safe. But when Clint got up from his seat by the bed, he saw Bruce hovering awkwardly by the door, not daring to come in, just like he’d stayed away from the impromptu party the night before.

And Clint knew exactly what to do.

“Hey,” he murmured, going to him while the others gathered around Kurt’s bed. “Let’s leave. Let’s go back to Bedford.”

Bruce looked up at him.

“Now?” he asked after a beat, eyes widening a little.

“Now,” Clint said under his breath.

Bruce’s confused look turned into flooding relief. “I— _yes,”_ he stammered. “Yes. Please. Let’s go.”

Clint took his hand in his, fingers laced tight, and they walked unnoticed out of the cheerful room.

 

*

 

 “I can’t,” Bruce said as they were about to walk out the door.

Clint didn’t say anything and didn’t try to pull him across the threshold. It was raining outside, making for an early dusk, and drops were rolling down the glass doors, blurring the red lights of the cars and the yellow glimmers reflecting on the sidewalk. Clint just looked at him, adjusting the heavy steel quiver on his shoulder, and waited.

Bruce swallowed, then said, “I have to stay here. I need the lab. For—for you.”

“Bruce,” Clint said quietly. “You did all the tests you could this morning. And everything came back negative, right? It’s useless. I’m as unanalyzable as you.”

He shuffled closer to give him a bit of warmth and feel his in return, too. “We can control the radiation spikes,” he said. “With Hulk, or with the gamma dampeners. So that’s taken care of. As for the rest,” he said even more softly, “I’ll go on cancer watch at Kings County.”

Bruce looked a little shocked at Clint’s bluntness, but then strangely relieved, as though he’d been afraid of spelling it out yet desperate to ask if he knew what to expect. Clint sent a silent prayer of thanks for Bruce’s panic attack from last night; without it, he would have probably kept his condition to himself like the idiot he was. And Bruce would have tortured himself in silence with the agonizing terror that those few slivers of relief were going to be torn away from him; and eventually he would have found out that Clint had lied to him, too, and maybe by then it would have been too late and God, Clint didn’t even want to imagine what happened next.

“I’ll do all the tests—I’ll be a good patient,” he went on. “But you won’t be the one doing them. _You_ will be too busy doing nothing else than eating and sleeping for at least three months. Okay?”

Bruce smiled a little, and nodded without a word.

“Okay,” Clint repeated, and he leaned forward to kiss him, short and soft.

When they parted, Jessica Drew was standing in the hall and staring at them with eyes like saucers.

Only then did Clint remember she hadn’t been in Kurt’s room with the others.

“Oh hey,” he said.

He looped an arm around Bruce’s shoulders. “So, you know how you thought I was hiding something and all,” he told her. “Congratulations: you were right.”

He turned away and said, “Tell them we went home, okay? I’ll see you soon.”

Without waiting for an answer, he pushed the glass door of Stark Tower, and this time, Bruce crossed the threshold with him and into the wet, grey world outside.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading. ^^ Thoughts, please?


	20. The other shoe

             

 

 

 

 

In his longing dreams, Clint had always thought he and Bruce would stay staring at their building for a long time, taking in the familiar façade, breathing in the feeling of home. But the rain had worsened and when they got out of the cab, they made a run for the door. Bruce was already shivering by the time they got there, but he didn’t look like he noticed how cold he was; the hall was dark and wet, and neither of them thought of turning on the light.

Clint was already heading for the stairs when Bruce softly pulled at his sleeve. “Um,” he murmured hesitantly. “Isn’t… is the elevator broken again?”

Clint blinked at him. He’d totally forgotten that Bruce had fixed the elevator before leaving. He hadn’t used it before he left for Europe.

“No,” he said at last. “You’re right. Let’s go.”

It was so weird—like finding a new room in your family home. They walked inside the small space and stood there as the doors closed. It was much slower than the ones in Stark Tower.

Bruce was still clutching at Clint’s sleeve; he let go a bit sheepishly when he noticed it, but Clint then laced their hands together again and squeezed tight. By the time they reached their floor, Bruce was a little more relaxed _—_ and damn it, Clint just wanted to kiss him all over again; but then the doors opened.

It was when they stepped outside that he realized that his keys were buried at the very bottom of the worn bag he’d carried around since he’d left—and the strap of the bag was stuck under the strap of the heavy steel quiver. He groaned and let go of Bruce’s hand to start putting them down, but before he could even begin to do anything, the door opened.

Seeing Kate standing there in a rectangle of warm light with Lucky sitting by her side was like looking at a post card. Or a mirage. She stared at them for three full seconds.

Then she stepped forward and threw her arms around Bruce to hug him tight.

Poor Banner looked completely dumbstruck, but then he actually began to return the hug, eyes wide. Clint grinned, because man, he had forgotten just how much he _loved_ Katie.

“Clint didn’t tell me he’d _found_ you!” she breathed at Bruce when she let go. “Are you okay?”

Bruce started to mumble he was fine and Clint felt something poke enthusiastically at his knee; looking down, he felt his heart melt for his big idiot pizza dog which had stayed there waiting for him all this time.

“Hey, buddy—whoa!” he said as Lucky jumped up to press his paws against Clint’s chest. “Aaaw. Nice to see that _someone’s_ glad to have me home.”

“Oh, knock it off, boss,” Kate said, rolling her eyes, but she was grinning, too. Bruce smiled at her, then softly excused himself and slipped inside the apartment, because he was tactful like that.

Hawkeye and Hawkeye stayed face-to-face for a while.

“I’m, uh,” Clint said, crouching to rub the neck of Lucky who kept trying to lick his face. “I’m… I’m sorry, Katie. For… for everything.”

“It’s okay,” she said.

He looked up, surprised.

“I was furious at you, but I’m too used to it, you know? It’s not worth the trouble.” She shrugged. “Besides, it looks like you’ve had a few hard times already.”

Clint took a deep breath, then just nodded, and rubbed Lucky’s neck all the more before straightening up.

“Come on in, you dummy,” she said fondly. “What’s with the steel quiver?”

Clint swallowed hard. Katie looked at him, and when he looked away, she frowned in slight alarm. “Clint—” she hesitated. “…Everything alright?”

“Yes,” Clint lied.

He smiled at her and walked inside.

“So do you, like, live here or somethin’ now?” he asked as he dropped his quiver by the couch.

“No,” she said, closing the door. “I tried to check on the place every now and then. In case…” she shrugged. “In case you were back. And since you’d called…”

Clint nodded a bit haphazardly, then petted Lucky who was so happy to have him back he kept letting out little whines and barks. The dog actually came and went between him and Bruce, who was very busy making tea on the counter to leave Kate and Clint their privacy.

“I took Lucky home with me, though,” she said. “Grills kept asking me about you every time we came back. You should go say hi.”

“Yeah,” Clint nodded.

Lucky was tugging at Bruce’s sleeve to the point that the doctor had to stop what he was doing to scratch him behind the ears. Clint realized he was staring; he looked away and caught Kate staring too. She glanced at him and asked in a very low voice, “What _happened_ to him?”

Clint only winced.

“Right,” she mumbled. She glanced at Bruce again. “So are you guys still…”

Clint nodded, surprised to feel himself blush a little. Kate gave him a sly grin and crossed her arms. “Wow, boss. Isn’t that your personal record? You never stayed with someone for so long before.”

“Brat,” he murmured.

She punched his shoulder and he smiled.

“Alright, I’m gonna get going,” she said.

“You can stay a bit longer,” he protested.

 “No,” she said, glancing at Bruce. “I can’t.”

Before he could understand what she meant by that, she stood on her tip-toes and kissed Clint’s cheek. “I’ll see you soon.”

Clint watched her leave, a bit puzzled, and turned back to Bruce, frowning.

“…How’s the tea?” he asked.

Bruce stayed motionless for almost a full ten seconds.

Then he murmured, “Um—it’s not—” he set his untouched cup on the counter. “It’s just hot water. I couldn’t find the tea.”

Clint’s shoulders slumped. He felt something painful and fond squeeze at his heart; he opened his mouth to say something but the couch moved away under his hand and his muscles abruptly turned into water and he was very surprised to find he was now lying down on the wooden floor, his mouth still open on an unsaid word.

A second later, arms wrapped around him and dragged him up with his head in Bruce's lap; there was a bit of fumbling, a distant, hurried breath, and then a sharp pain in his arm, right through his shirt.

The world cleared up again. Clint stayed unmoving for a long time, in an awkward position, holding onto Bruce as he took deep breaths.

“We need to set some sort of timer for this thing,” he muttered at last, stiffly sitting up. “Every twelve hours. Roughly. Like for diabetes, you know? Or the pill. Not that I know anything about diabetes or the pill. I—whatever.”

He straightened up, and looked Bruce in the eyes, to show him he was fine now. Bruce, to his great relief, did not avert his gaze.

“We’ll figure this out,” Clint said, still a bit breathless. “Bruce. We’ll figure this out.”

Bruce nodded jerkily. “Yes,” he said in a weirdly angry tone. “We will.”

He clutched at Clint, staring at the floor with obstinate, burning eyes. “We will.”

 

*

 

The next day, Clint went out to Kings County and calmly explained that he’d been exposed to a severe amount of radiation and he wished to inform himself about cancer risks.

They did all sorts of tests and told him they'd get the results in a few days.

That night, Clint woke up face-down in his pillow to a strange sensation—not unpleasant, but still odd. It took him a few seconds to realize that Bruce was straddling him, sitting on his ass with his hands flat on Clint’s back.

“S’happening?” he mumbled in drowsy puzzlement.

Bruce’s thighs hugged his thighs, and he rocked a little on Clint’s ass as he seated himself. They were both wearing nothing but their underwear, and Clint encountered a brief, stupid second of panic.

“Wait,” he slurred, trying to shake off his haze, “no—wait—Bruce, uh, thanks, but this _really_ isn’t—”

Bruce’s hands pressed a long, firm caress into his back, fingers digging in Clint’s sore muscles, easing all the lingering pain out. Clint huffed a surprised breath. Bruce did it again, a bit harder, and Clint all but melted in the sheets.

“That’s all, you idiot,” Bruce said, in a voice slightly tinged with amusement—and fuck if _that_ wasn’t enough to make this completely worth it, even if the massage hadn’t been heavenly. Which it _was._

“But I can still stop if you want,” he added lightly, rubbing circles in Clint’s shoulders.

“God, please, no,” Clint moaned, and he should have felt ashamed of himself, but he was too busy turning into a puddle of goo. And—he realized with a pang of guilt—Bruce needed to do something for him. To give back, because he couldn’t understand how much he’d already given.

“F—uck, Bruce,” Clint mumbled. “The hell did you _learn_ that?”

“I spent some time in Thailand,” Bruce said softly. “It was only six months after the incident. Back then, nothing mattered but managing my anger—I tried out pretty much everything. I only really started to look for a cure once I got in Brazil.”

Clint closed his eyes with a soft sigh.

“Hey,” he muttered in his pillow. “Would you tell me more about the places you’ve been?”

Bruce’s hands paused. Then they resumed their entrancing pattern. “I don’t have a lot of fun stories.”

“I’ll tell you about the circus,” Clint offered.

He almost heard Bruce smile. “Okay,” he said, his voice a bit warmer. “But you go first.”

Clint described his first costume in great exaggerated detail and felt Bruce shake with silent laughter through the palms pressed into his lower back. Bruce told him about that time in India when he’d cluelessly wandered in town during _Holi,_ the Festival of Colors, and how he’d taken refuge on a roof to avoid getting caught up in the crowd, and watched the youth splatter themselves in colors and water and laugh and wrestle all day long. Clint told him about that day when he’d sprained his wrist and he’d had to shoot arrows using only his feet, and then Bruce told him about misty sunrises in the mountains, and Clint told him about the noodle incident, and time flew away with the droning back-and-forth of their murmured stories.

Until Clint’s phone buzzed on the nightstand, making them both freeze. It was the timer.

Without a word, Bruce stretched over Clint’s head and grabbed an arrowhead. He gripped Clint’s shoulder to keep the skin taut, then stuck it in his arm. Clint tensed, then relaxed as the charge emptied itself, and it was done.

They stayed silent for a little while. Bruce’s hands weren’t moving anymore.

Clint propped himself up; Bruce started to get off his back, looking away like he was about to leave the bed entirely, but Clint rolled on his side and pulled him back down with him, drawing the covers over them after they were settled again. Bruce didn’t lean into him, but he didn’t resist either.

Clint kissed his forehead, then put Bruce’s hand on his heart again and kept it there.

 

*

 

Kate visited them later that day and they all sat down together to watch Steve’s, Tony’s and Charles Xavier’s press conference. A representative of the WSC was facing them, looking very unhappy with the unfolding events. The whole thing was almost physically painful to watch until something happened Clint was certain Steve had planned all along—this was why he’d taken Tony with him.

“…and your so-called _protective_ actions are actually a _menace_ for the public’s security…”

“Like that time when you dropped a nuke on Manhattan,” Tony blurted angrily.

The silence which followed was impressive. Clint wondered why the hell they'd thought broadcasting Tony live would be a good idea. Then again, maybe they hadn't had any choice.

“Oops, my bad, it was an _alien missile_ which I _returned against the attackers._ That it?”

“Mr. Stark,” Steve said with quiet indignation, “this is classified information.”

The WSC representative started talking, but his words couldn’t be heard over the actual _uproar_ of the journalists. Charles Xavier leaned back in his chair with a sly little smile.

Kate turned off the TV.

“I think that went well,” she said.

 

*

 

Tony was put on trial for disclosing state secrets but gleefully ignored it and refused to show up in court.

“You can put me in prison if you want,” was his official statement. “You know where to find me. But you won’t. And you know why? Because you _need_ me. You need all of us.”

The public opinion was on his side—was on _their_ side, mostly; the balance had tipped in their favor again.

There were more victories—little victories, but victories nonetheless. Bruce still looked underfed, but he smiled at times. Such tiny miracles were usually followed by long quiet periods, as though the simple fact of being happy made him nervous, as though he kept waiting for the other shoe to drop.

There were more nightmares, too.

Sometimes, Bruce just couldn’t sleep and kept tinkering restlessly in the kitchen till four am, pacing back and forth, unable to sit still, until a groggy Clint in boxers and bedhead came to coax him into bed—or stay with him drinking tea till sunrise. Clint was pretty sure this still had to do with Bruce’s inability to believe it was all real; he hoped it’d pass as Bruce realized, bit by bit, that he was allowed to hope again.

But there were still the actual nightmares, the ones that sneaked up on Bruce and woke him up with a startle, the ones which left him shuddering like a leaf and covered in cold sweat.

About Ross, Clint assumed; but he could only assume since Bruce adamantly refused to speak about those. He kept shaking for so long afterwards, with such a wide-eyed, forlorn look on his face, that Clint once got up and dragged him into the bathroom in the middle of the night for a long, steamy shower. They hadn’t had sex since Stark Tower, and neither of them seemed to miss it; Bruce just melted in his arms and murmured repeated apologies and weary thanks again and again for almost half an hour. He didn’t go back to sleep, but he lay down curled up on himself with his head on Clint’s chest until dawn.

On one of these bad nights, Clint woke up to find Bruce sitting in bed next to him, staring into space with glassy eyes and goosebumps on his skin. When he felt Clint move, he glanced at him and smiled a tired smile.

“Hey,” he muttered dejectedly, rubbing his face, then dropping his hands.

“Hey,” Clint said, sitting up, too.

He didn’t ask _bad dream?_ because it was useless. He did hug Bruce from behind, and Bruce leaned against him without a word, and they stayed like this till dawn.

It had been almost one week. Clint’s cancer results should be there in the morning. Or tomorrow.

 

*

 

Bruce fell asleep again as the sun came up, and Clint left him under the covers to go make coffee. He couldn’t stop thinking about the gamma dampeners. One in the morning, one in the evening. It worked. He felt fine. But dampening the radiation still active in his blood couldn’t do anything to help the damage which had already been done.

 _If_ there had been any damage. Clint was almost entirely sure he had a fair chance. After all, each spike had been repressed almost at once.

But he was human, he knew that, and there was a reason Bruce still couldn’t sleep and barely ate. Clint hated to keep him on that edge. He wanted his results, and if they said he had cancer and that it’d spread and that it was likely to kill him in two months, then so be it. At least they wouldn’t be stuck in that state of terrible anxiety anymore—they could start fighting it. _Doing_ something.

Clint sighed, but before he could turn to the counter, someone knocked on the door. It was _very_ early and the knock was very loud. Clint stared at the door and vaguely remembered at last that some people out there might still want to kill him for the whole Barton Act business, even though things were starting to seriously move on after AIM’s attack on the president, and Steve’s press conference.

Clint walked to the door, then gingerly opened it.

“Whoa, bedhead alert. Did I wake you up?”

Clint stared at Tony, then opened the door wide. “Tony?” he murmured. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Tony rolled his eyes. “Thanks for the warm welcome, Barton, really. Can I come in or will you need a couple of hours to sort out your coiffure?”

Clint had no idea what he looked like, but he was sure Tony looked worse—apparently, his sleep schedule hadn’t improved the slightest bit; he had dark rings under his eyes and his hair looked like something had blown up in it. Too stunned and sleepy to react, Clint took a step backwards to let him in.

That was when he saw it, and his heart nearly stopped in his chest—a white envelope in front of his door, half-hidden under the doormat.

The logo of Kings County was clearly visible in the top right corner. Clint had insisted they just delivered the results instead of calling him or asking him to go back for a return consult; it was stupid, but he simply didn’t want to be away from Bruce until they knew. He’d offered a lot of money to the hospital if they could only get him the results at his door, quickly and privately—but still. He wasn't ready.

Swallowing down his sudden fear, Clint quickly picked the envelope up and stuffed it in his pocket—he couldn’t look at it while Tony was here; nobody knew he still suffered from the effects of Bruce’s desperate attempt to save him.

“You left in a hurry,” Tony was saying, looking around. “That kid Wagner wondered where you were. He’s actually—”

“Tony—keep your voice down,” Clint said, closing the door. “Some people still have that thing called a sleep schedule.”

“Your walls aren’t that thin,” Tony said, raising an eyebrow.

Clint didn’t answer anything. The letter in his pocket felt like it was burning him through his jeans.

Tony squinted at him. “Seriously?” he said, glancing at the bedroom. “So what, you guys got back together in the end?”

Clint blinked, then frowned. “I—you knew?”

Tony scoffed. “Was it supposed to be a secret?”

“Wait, who are you talking about?”

“Who are _you_ talking about? Jessica Drew, of course.”

Clint was astonished. So—Jessica hadn’t told anyone. Clint had no idea why not. He’d never been overly good at reading her. Maybe she’d been too upset—he didn’t want to think about it.

“It’s not her,” he said curtly. “Tony, why are you here?”

Tony opened his mouth to answer, but then there was a _BAMF!_ and he almost jumped out of his skin.

“Jesus!” Clint gasped.

Kurt landed on the floor with a guilty look in his yellow eyes, purple smoke rolling off in waves in the air.

“Kurt,” Clint panted, heart hammering in his chest, “there’s a goddamn elevator! It got fixed and all!”

“Sorry,” Kurt whispered sheepishly.

“And should you be leaping around like that? You just got out of a coma!”

“I _tried_ to tell you the kid was tagging along, but you wouldn’t listen,” Tony chimed in.

 “Okay—okay,” Clint said. “First of all: no more noise. In fact, let’s get out of here. Second of all—wait…”

He pulled a paper out of his pocket and scribbled on the back, _Gone out._ He left it on the counter for Bruce to see and grabbed Tony’s arm to lead him out. “C’mon, let’s take it upstairs.”

Kurt obligingly followed and they got up the stairs without a word. Clint shivered a little as he got out; it was cloudy outside, and still chilly from the night. He wasn’t really surprised to see Tony’s suit standing open like an empty shell in a corner. He guessed he should be grateful Stark hadn’t come knocking on his door in full armor.

“Okay, so what’s the deal?” Clint asked.

“What, Kurt? He just wanted to say hi,” Tony said. “When he heard I was coming to see you—”

“If I’m being invasive,” Kurt began to mutter, but Clint vehemently shook his head.

“No—it’s alright. Sorry I freaked out and sorry I was stupid enough to leave without a word. Just—next time, try teleporting _outside_ the door first, okay?”

Kurt grinned in relief. “Yes. Sure.”

“There!" Tony said, clasping his hands together. "Also, kid, we’re having poker night at the Tower tonight. You should come. Anyway,” he went on, turning back to Clint, “Your phone’s still out, you caveman, and Banner vanished the same day you left, so I just came to ask if you knew where he was.”

Clint snorted at him. “Aren’t you supposed to be some sort of genius?”

“What do you—”

He stopped abruptly.

Clint was touched by the fact Kurt had, obviously, kept their secret. Tony, though, looked like he was starting to piece together the puzzle, and he knew that someone who wasn’t Jessica was currently sleeping in Clint’s bed. He looked at Clint’s bedhead again, and that did it.

“Wait—” he began.

“Yeah,” Clint confirmed.

Tony just gaped at him, and Clint couldn’t help snorting a little. “I think it’s the first time I’ve seen you speechless.”

“You’re kidding me,” Tony said, frowning. _“Banner…?”_

“Seriously—you’d wondered where he was sleeping at the Tower. You didn’t ask your AI?”

Tony stared at him for a long second, with dark, grave eyes.

“Wow. Now _that’s_ reckless,” he said.

Clint scoffed. “Coming from you, that’s rich.”

“Poking Banner with sharp things is a lot different than—but that’s not even what I meant,” Tony said impatiently. “Clint, I know the guy. He’s going to run.”

Clint shook his head.

“That’s what he does,” Tony insisted with unusual seriousness. 

“Look, I don’t need a warning,” Clint said a bit wearily. “But thanks.”

His words sounded enough like a dismissal for Tony to say, “I still need to talk to him.”

“Not today,” Clint said. He glanced at Kurt. “You—feel free to visit anytime, man. You gotta meet Kate, she’s going to love you. But you,” he went on to Tony, “you wanna see Banner, wait until tomorrow.”

“Why tomorrow?”

Clint wasn’t going to tell him. He instinctively felt for the crisp envelope in his pocket—and froze.

It wasn’t there.

He tried to calm his suddenly hammering heart. It wasn’t lost—worst-case scenario was he’d dropped it on the stairs coming up. Or—oh no. _Wait._ Oh God, he knew where it was. He’d pulled it out of his pocket minutes ago to scribble his note to Bruce on the back.

“Clint?” Kurt asked in concern.

“I gotta go,” Clint said breathlessly.

 

*

 

He almost jumped down the flight of stairs, struggled to catch his breath in front of the door, then slowly pushed it open. The envelope was still there on the counter, and he sighed silently in relief. _Barton, you dummy._

He softly closed the door behind him, then walked to the counter.

He wasn’t sure if he should read the results now. But maybe it would be best for Bruce to hear them from Clint’s mouth.

He picked up the envelope, then turned it between his hands. And froze again.

It was open.

And it was _empty._

For a second, everything spun around him; then the world came into focus again, and he breathed, “Bruce,” and dropped the paper and hurried to the bedroom, _“BRUCE!”_

When he burst inside, the bed was still warm.

But it was empty, too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter's last chapter, guys!


	21. But now I see

 

 

 

 

 

_Not again._

Clint was flying down the stairs, his every thought focused on those two words, _not again, not again, not again._ So he had cancer—fuck it. _Fuck it._ He didn’t care. All he wanted was not to be alone anymore. All he wanted was for Bruce to stay—because Clint couldn’t do this, couldn’t fall back down into his numb pit of despair, and all he could think was _not again, not again, not again, not again._  

He suddenly tripped and slid down a few steps—trying to catch himself, his hand slipped on a sharp, jagged wooden edge sticking out of the banister, and it sliced into his palm; he ignored the sudden stinging pain and got up to keep running down the last flights of stairs, drops of blood staining the steps.

He stormed out the front door and stilled, panting.

The day was young and full of promises, the sky a light, pale blue, without a single cloud in sight, the air already warming up. A bird was singing over the distant hum of the cars and bikes.

Bruce was standing on the sidewalk.

He looked lost and confused. He turned to Clint, very pale, with dark eyes very wide. The results sheet was crumpled between his fingers.

Clint was so relieved he could have sobbed. “Bruce,” he gasped, hurrying closer. _“Fuck,_ I thought…”

Bruce blinked at him. “I’m sorry,” he said in a small, strange voice. “I just… I needed to breathe. And since you’d said you’d gone out…”

“On the _roof!”_ Clint nearly yelled. “Not—not—” his own shaking laugh cut him off. “Shit. Bruce. I really thought…” He rubbed his eyes, feeling stupid. “Look, it’ll be alright,” he began, hurriedly, because it was very important he said this, very important Bruce knew, “Now we know and it’s better that way. And I’m sure we…”

He blinked something warm out of his eyes, and thought his tears had rolled down—but no; it was blood.

“Are you—” Bruce began hurriedly, grabbing his hand.

“I’m fine,” Clint started at the same time, “I just…”

They were staring at his bloodied palm.

“I just…” Clint repeated.

Bruce’s fingers were gentle around his hand. His thumb slowly wiped off the blood.

“I just…” Clint murmured, but he didn’t know what he wanted to say anymore. He couldn’t look away from the jagged cut.

It was beginning to heal.

It was very slow—not matching Logan’s healing factor or even Steve’s—but it was still visible to the naked eye. Wolverine’s gruff voice echoed in Clint’s memory. _That shit got you your spine and main organs back…_

The radiation spikes had lingered.

 

The rest had lingered, too.

 

“That,” Bruce said hoarsely, eyes wide.

He cleared his throat, then said in as light a voice as he could manage, “That would explain your results.”

Clint looked up, not daring to hope yet.

But even though Bruce was trembling, it became obvious, then, that he wasn’t trembling with despair.

“Clint,” Bruce began, but even good news was too much for him to tell and he let the paper fall on the ground and wrapped Clint in his arms, so _tight_. Clint returned the hug _,_ and he buried a hand in his curls and felt Bruce huff a shaky laugh of joy against his neck.

“You did it,” Clint pulling back to frame his face. “I knew it, Bruce. Fucking told you. You saved me all the way.”

“Shut up,” Bruce said.

He tugged Clint close again, tears rolling down his cheeks—and he was still too thin and too wan, but breathing again. Breathing at _last._

“I’m sorry,” he murmured suddenly.

Before Clint could ask _about what?_ Bruce went on, “I’m not—I’m not going anywhere.” He swallowed. “I swear.”

Clint’s throat suddenly tightened. He nodded, blinking out what couldn't be tears, because really. 

“Thanks,” he whispered. “I… I needed that.”

Bruce just smiled and closed his eyes. Clint sighed and buried his face into Bruce’s soft hair, for a still, quiet while, in the silent warmth of the sun. Perfect—in the end, everything just _perfect._

 

It was the first day of summer.

 

*

 

“First day of autumn,” Natasha noticed distractedly, eyes fixed on her phone.

The blue glow was lighting up her pale skin in the dark; they’d turned the lights off in the tiny hotel room.

She pocketed her phone and looked out the window. “And here’s our target. Finally.”

The lights were still on inside the even tinier bathroom; Clint was standing there, staring at his reflection, studying the dark rings under his eyes which were never going away, but never getting really worse, either.

His own phone buzzed against his thigh. The text only read, _“?”_

Clint couldn’t help smiling. He’d never received longer texts for the whole month he’d been gone; but he’d received them every day, each time from a different number. He knew Bruce was still very nervous using any device that might signal his position—but it was Bruce himself who had insisted on staying in touch when Steve had requested Clint's presence on the field. It had been a few weeks, and Clint had a lot of question marks in his phone. Each time, he replied,  _“!”_ and nothing more. 

This time though, he wrote _Back h_ _ome soon._

He briefly wondered if this hadn’t been a mistake—but he'd wanted to let Bruce know, so much—but before he could start overthinking it, the phone buzzed again; and the words warmed him up despite the exertion and the strain of the past few days.

 

_I’ll be there._

 

“Let’s go,” Natasha called.

Clint looked up one last time—then looked again. In the mirror, his eyes had turned a bright green.

He looked hard at himself, then closed his eyes for a long second. When he reopened them, they were grey.

He smirked at his reflection, a cocky little smirk in the corner of his mouth.

“Clint?”

“Coming,” he said quickly, pocketing his phone.

He shouldered his quiver and turned away, shutting off the lights behind him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, dear readers, for being my readers. It's been a pleasure sharing this story with you. Please, tell me what you thought of the end!
> 
> For those of you who'd like to know if there will be more, well, I'm working on a long FrostHawk and a FrostIron one-shot right now; but there _is_ a bonus third part of the Marvel Fraction series, just a bit of smutty fluff (or fluffy smut) exploring Clint's and Bruce's not-quite-sex life. Check it out if you're interested. 
> 
> Thank you so much, yet again. Sorry for all the evil. ^^


	22. Sexless Sex

Just a non-chapter to tell people who subscribed to this work, and not to the author or series, that the next part is up. ^^ Thanks and enjoy!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [In The Wings Sketch #1](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1442542) by [Feanor_in_leather_pants](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Feanor_in_leather_pants/pseuds/Feanor_in_leather_pants)
  * [In The Wings Sketches #2](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1446817) by [Feanor_in_leather_pants](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Feanor_in_leather_pants/pseuds/Feanor_in_leather_pants)
  * [Great at Pancakes [ART for In the Wings]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1451089) by [Feanor_in_leather_pants](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Feanor_in_leather_pants/pseuds/Feanor_in_leather_pants)




End file.
